Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville doesn't have good memories of the last time a team he coached matched up with the Penn State football team.

Tuberville was a 32-year old graduate assistant for Miami in 1986 when the Nittany Lions shocked the prohibitively favored and talent-laden Hurricanes with a 14-10 win in the Fiesta Bowl that gave the Lions their second national championship.

Despite the painful recollections of that heartbreaking loss, Tuberville is thrilled to know that he will get a chance to match his Tigers against Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's Lions in the Capital One Bowl on Jan. 1 in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando. Tuberville's team accepted an invitation to the bowl yesterday.

"We're excited to be playing a team with such tradition," Tuberville said. "In my mind Joe Paterno is one of best to ever coach college football, and I'm excited to put my team against his."

The Tigers finished the regular season 8-4, with a 5-3 record in the SEC. They won four of their last five games, including a 17-7 win over Alabama in the Iron Bowl.

After Georgia defeated Arkansas 30-3 Saturday night in the SEC championship game, the Capital One Bowl, which gets the second choice among SEC teams, had the Tigers and Razorbacks left on the board as possible selections. Though Arkansas won the head-to-head battle with a 38-17 victory, Saturday night's lopsided score gave the Tigers the bid.

"We had a selection committee meeeting today, they overwhelmingly selected Auburn," said Tom Mickle, executive director of Florida Citrus Sports, the managing company for the Capital One Bowl. "At last week's meeting, we saw that we had a very split selection committee going into the game. The outcome affected it considerably."

Tuberville was asked to recall his last game against a Paterno-led team on Auburn's teleconference announcing the bid acceptance. Though it was clear he was disappointed at the time, he was fortunate that time healed some of his wounds. He remained at Miami until 1993 when he became the Hurricanes defensive coordinator. He would win three national titles in that period. The first came the next year, and the Hurricanes also won in 1989 and 1991.

"It was tough, because I was a young coach, and I thought it was going to be my only chance," Tuberville said. "And we were so close. We drove down to the 6-yard line before (quarterback) Vinny (Testaverde) throws that interception ... But it was a great football game, with two great teams, and that was some environment."

The rest of the bowl situation was also ironed out yesterday. Iowa, the Big Ten co-champion, was officially selected as an at-large team in the BCS. They will play in the Orange Bowl against Southern California, the Pac-10 co-champion. Washington State will play Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl and Georgia will play Florida State in the Sugar Bowl.

The Orange Bowl took Iowa as the first selection of all the bowl teams after the Fiesta Bowl, a choice they had because of Miami being the No. 1 team in the BCS standings. According to Big East commissioner and BCS coordinator Mike Tranghese, the Rose Bowl was "disappointed" not to be able to have their traditional Big Ten/Pac-10 matchup, but according to Orange Bowl executive director Keith Tribble, they understood that it was all about business.

"We have the opprotunity to talk with our BCS partners and make adjustments as we see fit ... but we have to go back to the original purpose, which is to create a great matchup," he said. "At end of the day, the University of Iowa fit the selection criteria we were looking for."

The Orange Bowl committee had expressed that strong desire to have Iowa in their game, in Tuesday's BCS teleconference, and that was the reason the Big Ten jumped the gun to allow all the other bowls they are associated with to pick before it was official.

"After that conference, I knew that Iowa was a 99.9 percent lock," Tranghese said. "But I made sure I said at the end of that conference that the bowls could still change their minds. The Big Ten just made a mistake, and (Big Ten Commissioner) Jim Delany has admitted that."