The assumption was that somehow, some way LSU would face Notre Dame in the bowl season for the TV ratings appeal of the Tigers’ Brian Kelly facing his former team.

It’s not going to happen. The shake-ups at the top of the national rankings after Saturday’s conference championship games nixed that notion.

Instead, LSU (9-3), which remained No. 13 in the College Football Playoff rankings, will travel to Tampa, Florida, to face unranked Wisconsin (7-5) from the Big Ten. Notre Dame ended up the Sun Bowl against Oregon State.

They kick off at 11 a.m. on Jan. 1.

“An SEC-Big Ten matchup always creates a lot of excitement,” Kelly said. “But facing a Wisconsin team led by a great coach in Luke Fickell makes this bowl game even more attractive. Wisconsin has a great tradition with a tremendous fan base. I know both teams are excited to be in Tampa during New Year’s.”

It will be the Tigers’ third appearance in Tampa for what in previous LSU trips was known as the Hall of Fame (1988) and Outback (2013) bowls.

LSU lost to Syracuse 23-10 in the first and beat Iowa 21-14 in the latter.

The big question is whether quarterback Jayden Daniels — who is a candidate for the Heisman Trophy — will play in the game?

Wisconsin’s leading rusher, Braelon Allen, has announced he will opt out of the game to prepare for the NFL draft.

Daniels was non-committal after the Tigers’ final-regular game against Texas A&M.

“I’ve got to make some decisions,” he said after the Tigers’ 42-30 victory on Nov. 25. “I’m going to sit down, talk to my family … we’ll go from there.”

If he should opt out, LSU will get a sneak peak at the future with Garrett Nussmeier under center.

If Daniels does play, he’ll end his LSU career against the same team that he finished against while at Arizona State. His Sun Devils lost to Wisconsin in the 2021 Las Vegas Bowl in what was a mediocre performance by his LSU standards — he threw for 159 yards and ran for another 40 — before transferring to LSU shortly after.

This year, like so many of LSU’s games, it will be a battle of contrasts. It’s an offensively challenged Wisconsin team (ranked 109th in the NCAA at 22.8 points per game) against the Tigers historically bad defense (80th in the NCAA, allowing 27.8 ppg and 104th while allowing 409 ypg). But defensively, the brutish Badgers bring the nation’s 18th-ranked defense against the LSU offensive fireworks that leads the nation in scoring (46.4 ppg) and total offense (547.8 ypg).

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” said Fickell, who’s in his first year at Wisconsin after seven years as Cincinnati’s head coach. “I think that’s the most intriguing thing for our guys.”

LSU and Wisconsin have played four previous times, with the Tigers winning three, but this will the first postseason meeting.

The first two meetings go back a while — the Tigers won 38-28 in 1971 at Wisconsin and 27-7 the next year in Baton Rouge.

More recently, on neutral sites in season-openers, LSU rallied in the fourth quarter to beat the Badgers 28-24 in Houston in 2014. Wisconsin got its lone victory when the two teams opened 2016 season in the Lambeau Field home of the Green Bay Packers and the Badgers prevailed 16-14.