How Does the NCAA Fill their Bowl Games?

[BigdaddyQH]

The NCAA needs 80 teams to fill the 40 open Bowl Games. The NC games features the two survivors of the Cotton and Orange Bowls this year. The rules basically state that 6 wins and you are in. Here is the problem. Right now there are 62 teams that have qualified and 34 teams that did not make it. There are 30 teams that can go either way depending on how they finish the season. If half of them make it, that means that 15 more will be added to the list, leaving the NCAA 3 teams short of the number needed to fill the Bowls. Out of those 30 teams, 11 have only 4 wins or less and 6 losses, meaning that those teams must win out to qualify. A tall order considering they only have 4 wins going into their last two (or three) games.

The question now becomes what does the NCAA do if they do not get enough teams to qualify. Most, if not all of the Bowl Games that will have opening will be tier three games, which do not draw much and do not pay much. Is a School going to want to take a financial hit by sending a team that has lost more games than they have won to a worthless Bowl Game? Would you send your team to play in the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit? I have no clue how they will solve this problem, but the NCAA sure asked for it. Any comments or idea's?

[Isaiah]

An interesting and thoughtful post..

Lots of fine print "contingency agreements" coupled with the NCAA's omnipotent waiver power will insure all Bowl games are played.

"On August 2, 2012, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors approved a significant change to the process to determine bowl eligible teams, going so far as to potentially allow 5-7 teams to go to a bowl, in case there were not enough regular bowl-eligible teams to fill every game. If a bowl has one or more conferences/teams unable to meet their contractual commitments and there are no available bowl-eligible teams, the open spots can be filled – by the particular bowl's sponsoring agencies – as follows:^"

1. Teams finishing 6-6 with one win against a team from the lower Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), regardless of whether that FCS school meets NCAA scholarship requirements. Until now, an FCS win counted only if that opponent met the scholarship requirements—specifically, that school had to award at least 90% of the FCS maximum of 63 scholarship equivalents over a two-year period. In the 2012 season, programs in four FCS conferences cannot meet the 90% requirement (56.7 equivalents)—the Ivy League, which prohibits all athletic scholarships; the Patriot League and Pioneer Football League, which do not currently award football scholarships; and the Northeast Conference, which limits football scholarships to 38 equivalents.
2. 6-6 teams with two wins over FCS schools.
3. Teams that finish 6-7 with loss number seven in their conference championship game (that has been eliminated by the conference championship waiver rule).
4. 6-7 teams that normally play a 13-team schedule, such as Hawaii's home opponents. Although Hawaii normally plays a 13-game schedule, it only played 12 games this season.
5. FCS teams who are in the final year of the two-year FBS transition process, if they have at least a 6-6 record.
6. Finally, 5-7 teams that have a top-5 Academic Progress Rate (APR) score. This was later adjusted to allow other 5-7 teams to be selected thereafter—in order of their APR. ^[11]

[Isaiah]

Love the travesty of 5-7 schools having to pay their coach a big bonus for "earning" a bowl bid! Most coaches have that clause in their contracts.

From ESPN:

Of the teams that are not currently bowl eligible that can reach five-wins, here’s how they rank based on the 2013-14 APR data, the most recent available, which will be used by the NCAA:


985 -- Utah State (5-5), Nebraska (5-6)
983 -- Vanderbilt (4-6)
980 -- Boston College (3-7), Rutgers (3-7)
978 -- Georgia Tech (3-7)
977 -- Virginia Tech (5-5), Indiana (4-6), Washington (4-6)
976 -- Missouri (5-5), Kansas State (3-6)
975 -- San Jose State (4-6), South Carolina (3-7)

One source said with so many unknowns about the process, he believes bowl agreements could be made on the side. “Whichever school can promise the most tickets and those sort of things. It will be like the old days of giving out bowl bids (to fill the bowls): like the wild, wild West,” the source said.


Besides the argument that there are too many bowl games -- 63 percent of the 128 FBS teams will go bowling -- there is a growing faction not thrilled about sending 5-7 teams to a bowl: athletic directors. “I’ve heard from a number of ADs and they don’t like paying out bowl bonuses to a 5-7 coach,” an industry source said.

[Isaiah]

Team	APR Score	Current Record	Projected Wins
Nebraska	985	5-6	5.46
Utah State	985	5-5	6.42
Vanderbilt	983	4-6	4.64
Indiana	977	4-6	5.07
Virginia Tech	977	5-5	6.09
Washington	977	4-6	5.65
Kansas State	976	3-6	4.61
Missouri	976	5-5	5.43
San Jose State	975	4-6	4.95
Minnesota	975	4-6	5.07
Illinois	973	5-5	5.95
Middle Tennessee	973	5-5	6.61
Rice	973	4-6	4.94
Auburn	968	5-5	5.99
UConn	960	5-5	5.46
Texas	958	4-6	4.45
Colorado	957	4-7	4.38
UTEP	954	4-6	4.51
Louisiana-Lafayette	953	4-5	5.31
Old Dominion	951	5-5	5.50
ECU	950	4-6	5.29
Central Michigan	949	5-5	6.67
Arizona State	949	5-5	5.96
Buffalo	948	5-5	6.03
Akron	947	5-5	6.40
Kentucky	945	4-6	5.02
Colorado State	944	5-5	6.39
South Alabama	943	5-4	5.65
Florida International	933	5-6	5.15

That Nebraska is actually going to get into a bowl illustrates what a complete money grubbing farce college football has become.