It's official.

No matter what comes out of the mess the Big Ten seems to have created by declaring that Iowa was assured a BCS bid, the Penn State football team will still be playing in the Capital One Bowl in Orlando on Jan. 1.

By accepting the Capital One Bowl's invitation, the Nittany Lions are in an agreement that neither party can back out of for any reason.

"We're set," said Tom Mickle, executive director of Florida Citrus Sports, the managing company for the Capital One Bowl. "If Iowa disappeared from the BCS some way or other, they would be going somewhere other than here. There are no out clauses in our contracts, but we're excited about it."

The binding bowl contracts put Iowa in what is basically an all-or-nothing situation. In a press release Tuesday, the Big Ten declared that the conference co-champion Hawkeyes "will play in a Bowl Championship Series game to be determined after the results of Saturday's games are known."

If that statement turns out to be false, the Hawkeyes would likely be headed to the Motor City Bowl on Dec. 26 in Detroit, which has a spot for the seventh selection for the Big Ten. It is the only Big Ten spot that has not been filled.

"We just heard what we heard from the Big Ten," Iowa sports information director Phil Haddy said. "All we have to do is put our trust in the Big Ten and the commissioner. We have to have faith in what they did."

Haddy said that he "echoed" the thoughts of Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz and athletic director Bob Bowlsby.

Because co-champion Ohio State won the conference's automatic bid, and the Hawkeyes, at No. 5, are not ranked in the top four of the BCS rankings, they can only be taken as one of two at-large selections, and they are not an automatic selection.

However, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany called the Capital One Bowl after the BCS teleconference Tuesday to tell them that Iowa would definitely be selected as an at-large, and the rest of the bowls with Big Ten ties could make their selections.

"They must be very confident," Mickle said. "They must have gotten the assurances they needed that Iowa was going to be selected."

Neither the BCS nor any of the bowls involved would confirm that Iowa would be offered a bid to the Orange, Rose or Sugar bowls.

"I'm sure [the Big Ten and the BCS] have talked," said John Paquette, associate commissioner of communications for the Big East, the conference currently in charge of the BCS. "But as far as straightening things out, all I can say is what we said [Tuesday]. We will announce the at-large selections on Sunday."

Big East commissioner and BCS coordinator Mike Tranghese conferred on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption yesterday.

"No one is in," he said. "The Big Ten was making an assumption."

Big Ten associate commissioner of communications Sue Lister said the Big Ten still would not release any comment other than what was in the release.

There is still a good possibility the Hawkeyes will be selected for a BCS bowl. They could actually play in the Fiesta Bowl if Miami loses to Virginia Tech on Saturday and Georgia loses to Arkansas that night in the SEC championship game. If that doesn't happen, the Rose Bowl would be their most likely destination. Other than last season's national championship game, a Big Ten team has played a Pac 10 team in the Rose Bowl every season since 1946. Bowl officials have expressed a strong desire to continue that tradition.

The wild card is the Orange Bowl, which selects both of its teams before the Rose Bowl has a chance to pick a fill-in for Ohio State, a Fiesta Bowl selection. If Washington State defeats University of California-Los Angeles Saturday and wins the Pac 10 championship, No. 4 Southern California (USC) would have to be an at-large selection. That would mean that if the Orange Bowl selected BCS No. 6 Kansas State or No. 10 Notre Dame, Iowa would be shunned. However, according to Tranghese, the bowl "has not hidden the fact that they are very interested in the University of Iowa."

If USC wins the Pac 10 with a Washington State loss, two of the aforementioned teams will go to the BCS. According to Orange Bowl spokesman Joe Hornstein, the Orange Bowl is considering USC, Iowa, Kansas State and Notre Dame as possible at-large selections.