Auburn, in a not-very-well-kept secret, will be the SEC representative at the 44th Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta on Dec. 31.

Who the Tigers will meet there, however, comes as a bit of a surprise.

Auburn (7-5, 4-4 SEC) will match up with Virginia (8-4, 5-3 ACC) in the New Year’s Eve game at the Georgia Dome, which is set for a 6:30 p.m. kickoff.

It was widely presumed that, after Virginia Tech's 38-10 loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship game on Saturday night, the Hokies would drop out of the BCS picture and to the Chick-fil-A Bowl, which gets second choice of ACC teams after the BCS.

But the Sugar Bowl snatched up the Hokies (11-2, 7-1 ACC), leaving the Chick-fil-A Bowl to pick up Virginia.

Bowl president and CEO Gary Stokan said he contacted Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage on Tuesday to let him know the Cavaliers were very much a part of the bowl’s thought process.

Stokan said the bowl chose Virginia over the ACC’s other 8-4 teams — Florida State and Georgia Tech — because the Cavaliers beat both in head-to-head matchups.

“It was the Virginia team — the players and coaches — that played themselves into our game,” Stokan said. “They made our selection easy for us.”

Virginia hasn’t been to a bowl since the 2007 season — which ended in a 31-28 loss to Texas Tech in the Gator Bowl — and went 12-24 from 2008-10.

But second-year coach Mike London has led the resurgence of a young Cavaliers team, and was named ACC Coach of the Year for his efforts.

London won an FCS championship with Richmond, his alma mater, in 2008.

“I know they play really good defense and offensively they do a really good job running the ball and having a balanced attack,” Tigers coach Gene Chizik said. “And I know (London’s) background of winning championships.

“That’s really all I need to know.”

London’s cursory knowledge of his bowl opponent runs about as deep.

“When you talk about Auburn football, you talk about the defending national champions,” London said.

The Tigers have won in their last three forays to the Georgia Dome: a 38-28 win over Tennessee in the 2004 SEC Championship game, a 23-20, overtime win over Clemson in the 2007 Chick-fil-A Bowl and a 56-17 win over South Carolina in the 2010 SEC Championship game.

Auburn is 3-1 all-time in the various incarnations of the Chick-fil-A Bowl, winning in 2007, losing 16-10 to North Carolina in 2001, beating Clemson, 21-17, in 1998 and beating Indiana, 27-23, in 1990.

The Tigers are 1-1 all-time against the Cavaliers, with an 18-7 win in Charlottesville in 1997 and a 19-0 loss in Auburn in 1998.

Auburn Director of Athletics Jay Jacobs said the Tigers have more than 17,000 alumni in the Atlanta area, and he expects them to show up en masse for the game.

“It is a fun time to be in Atlanta on New Year’s Eve to play in the Chick-fil-A Bowl,” Jacobs said. “We’ve been there before, and there’s not a better venue in college athletics than to play there in the Georgia Dome.”

Though it might be difficult to see who's rooting for who at first glance: Both teams lean heavily on the same color scheme.

"I know there's certainly going to be a lot of orange and blue in Atlanta on New Year's Eve weekend," Littlepage said.

Ticket information
Stokan said 34,000 tickets to the game are split between the two schools — available through each school’s athletic office — and there are less than 1,000 tickets available on TicketMaster.

All tickets through the Chick-Fil-A Bowl office are sold out, the 15th straight sellout for the bowl, which is the second-longest sellout streak to only the Rose Bowl.

For information on Auburn ticket sales, go to auburntigers.com.

Student tickets go on sale starting at 8 a.m. Tuesday on the north side of Auburn Arena, on a first-come, first-served basis.

Quick hits
Auburn is the home team for the game, determined by an alternating-year basis between the ACC and SEC teams. The Tigers will wear their traditional blue jerseys … Each school will get a $100,000 donation to its general scholarship fund for its inclusion in the bowl … This is the 20th time the ACC and SEC will face off in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, with the ACC leading the series, 10-9 … Both Chizik and London said their coaches’ poll ballots conformed with the final BCS Standings: LSU first, followed by Alabama and Oklahoma State.