LOOKING AHEAD : Seminoles’ Bowden Nearly Bowled Over by the Possibilities

Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden slept like a baby Saturday night, nodding off at 10 into an R.E.M. state in which he could happily revisit his team’s 24-21 win over No. 1 Florida.

The victory vaulted the 11-0 Seminoles to No. 1 in Sunday’s Associated Press poll and earned Florida State the right to play for the national title in the Sugar Bowl.

But as dawn broke, Bowden started playing the “what if” game along with the rest of America as he sorted through the various bowl possibilities.

Bowden will be sleeping well so long as Nebraska defeats Texas next Saturday in the Big 12 Conference title game, which would match No. 1 Florida State against No. 3 Nebraska in the Sugar Bowl.

The Seminoles formally accepted the Sugar Bowl’s invitation after Saturday’s game.

But what if Texas beats Nebraska? And Florida, which only dropped to No. 4 after Saturday’s loss, beats Alabama next Saturday in the Southeastern Conference title game?

The Sugar Bowl would likely have no choice but stage a Florida-Florida State rematch, which would please few except Gator fans seeking redemption.

Bowden didn’t even want to consider that possibility.

“I don’t want no more of them,” Bowden said of Florida. “Yeah, I’m a coward. Never said I wasn’t.”

Bowls generally abhor rematches, but the Sugar may have no choice.

Nor might Bowden. “You don’t like to play people that you’ve beat,” he said. “You don’t want to play them anymore. I’ve got to go back and check all those articles to see what I’ve said. Those players got to go back and see every thing they said. And somehow retract.

“Now, if I had lost, yeah, I’d love another shot at them.”

With less than a week before bowl bids are finalized, the bowl possibilities remain dizzying.

Three conference title games this weekend will control the fate of nine bowl games. So long as the favorites win--Brigham Young over Wyoming in the Western Athletic, Florida over Alabama in the SEC, Nebraska over Texas in the Big 12--the Alliance picture will likely end up as follows:

Sugar: Florida State-Nebraska; Fiesta: Penn State-BYU; Orange: Florida-Virginia Tech.

Notre Dame’s loss to USC late Saturday night was only the latest, and most significant, monkey wrench tossed in the mix.

The defeat all but eliminated the 8-3 Irish from alliance contention.

With a win over USC, the Irish would have gone to the Fiesta Bowl and picked up a check for $8.486 million.

Instead, the Irish have few options. The benefit of playing as an independent is that Notre Dame does not have to share bowl payoffs with conference members.

The drawback is that the Irish have no conference tie-ins to non-alliance bowls. There was an arrangement whereby, had a second-place team from either the Atlantic Coast or Big East conferences made the alliance as an at-large pick, Notre Dame could have filled the conference’s slot in the Gator Bowl.

But that chance ended when at-large hopeful North Carolina lost to Virginia.

“There are very few disadvantages of not being in a conference,” Notre Dame spokesman Mike Enright said. “Being 8-3 and not being in a bowl game may be one of them.”

Notre Dame’s only viable options now are to accept an at-large bid from the Independence Bowl, which pays $800,000 or the Copper Bowl, which pays $750,000. One Copper berth was slotted for the Big 12 Conference’s fifth team, but it became available because the so-called “Superconference” did not qualify enough bowl-eligible teams.

There is also a possible back door scenario in which Notre Dame could ponder the Aloha Bowl in the unlikely event Colorado was taken as the Alliance at-large selection.

A BYU-to-the-Alliance scenario would leave open a spot for either the Copper or Holiday Bowls, but that slot will be filled by either Utah or San Diego State of the WAC, both of which are bowl-qualified.

There is also a chance Notre Dame will accept no bids.

Irish Athletic Director Mike Wadsworth has suggested that the school wouldn’t be interested in the Independence Bowl, although Enright said Sunday that may not be the case.

Notre Dame’s future might be more clear after its weekly conference call today with the Alliance.

While accepting a Copper or Independence bid might seem demeaning to a school of Notre Dame’s stature, it would afford valuable pre-bowl practice it would not otherwise get for a team breaking in a new coach.

“I could see it used against us in recruiting,” Enright said of the possible backlash in not accepting a bowl bid. “ ‘Go to Notre Dame, go 8-3, and don’t go to a bowl game.” ’

The Independence Bowl, held Dec. 31 in Shreveport, La., is drooling over the prospects of hosting Notre Dame in what would be Lou Holtz’s last game.

“We realize it’s a longshot,” Independence Bowl director Glen Krupica said Sunday. “But we’d be crazy not to be interested.”

Krupica said Notre Dame has not told him it is not interested, although the Irish would have to be released from the Alliance to accept.

Larry Brown, the Copper Bowl’s executive director, said Notre Dame was cool to the idea of his bowl three weeks ago when he spoke with Irish officials, but that was before the USC loss. Brown said he would make another run at the Irish today. The Copper Bowl is held Dec. 27 in Tucson.

“We feel reasonably comfortable they might be interested,” Brown said.

The main benefactor of Notre Dame’s loss is No. 5 BYU, one of four finalists for two at-large Alliance picks.

There was a chance BYU, even at 13-1, would have been left out of the Alliance. But provided the Cougars beat Wyoming in Saturday’s WAC title game, they are likely to go to the Fiesta Bowl.