BATON ROUGE — The Cotton Bowl wasn’t here Friday, but the Razorbacks might be there New Year’s Day.

Arkansas improved to 8-4 and enhanced its chances of moving up the chain of bowls and playing in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas by beating No. 1 LSU 50-48 on Friday.

“I hope the Cotton Bowl comes and gets us,” Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt said. “I love it... I hope they give us that invitation. I want to go to the Cotton Bowl.”

The Cotton Bowl has had representatives at other Arkansas games this season, but didn’t have one in the Tiger Stadium press box Friday.

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“The Razorbacks certainly played their way back onto our radar screen with their impressive upset of the No. 1 team,” Cotton Bowl President Rick Baker said. “However, there are a lot of football games to be played and we will be monitoring them closely, this week and next.

“ The great thing about the current system is that everyone can wait for all the games to be played before the final matchups are determined.”

Bowl matchups won’t be announced until after next weekend’s games, including several conference championship games.

If LSU loses in next Saturday night’s SEC Championship Game against either Georgia or Tennessee, the Tigers might be an attractive pick for the Cotton Bowl.

Georgia and Tennessee also are possibilities along with Arkansas and LSU, and Kentucky might be in the Cotton Bowl mix if it beats Tennessee today.

Auburn will be 8-4 if it beats Alabama today, but the Tigers beat Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl last season, and bowls usually prefer not to invite the same team in consecutive years.

Big 12 teams the Cotton Bowl figures to be considering are Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

The Liberty, Independence and Chick-fil-A bowls had representatives at Tiger Stadium on Friday to watch the Razorbacks, but like Nutt, Arkansas’ players are hoping for the Cotton Bowl.

“Our goal coming into the game was to get to the Cotton Bowl, and beating LSU has to help that,” Arkansas junior center Jonathan Luigs said. “The Cotton Bowl is where we want to be for sure.”

Arkansas senior cornerback Matterral Richardson, who intercepted a two-point conversion pass on the final play to beat LSU, is from Marlin, Texas, and said he hopes to finish his college career in his home state.

“My mother has never seen me play a game in person since I came to Arkansas,” Richardson said. “But if we go to the Cotton Bowl, I think she’ll be able to come to the game.”

If the Razorbacks don’t make it to the Cotton Bowl, the Liberty Bowl on Dec. 29 in Memphis figures to be a strong possibility.

“We’re very high on Arkansas, as we are a lot of teams,” Liberty Bowl scout John Barzizza said. “It’s still pretty convoluted right now in the SEC.”

In addition to Arkansas, other SEC teams being considered by the Liberty Bowl figure to be Auburn, Mississippi State, Kentucky and Alabama — if the Crimson Tide beats Auburn.

The Liberty Bowl matches an SEC team against the Conference USA champion, which likely will be Tulsa or Central Florida.

Albert Maslia, a scout for the Chick-fil-A Bowl, said his game is looking at Arkansas, even though it is played in Atlanta and usually prefers to invite an SEC East team.

“You want to know who’s in the mix for us ? Who isn’t ?” Maslia said with a laugh. “I really think it’s wide-open.”