As regular season winds down, 15 slots in bowls available
The picture for teams chasing bowl eligibility got a little clearer last weekend, but there’s still some sorting out to do.
Notre Dame, UCLA, California and Texas Tech are out for now after their seventh losses. Kansas State, South Carolina and Kentucky won their way in. Several others hoping to play in the postseason remain on the fence with two weeks left in the season.
The 40 bowl games on the schedule require 80 teams to reach the threshold of six wins. Entering Tuesday, there were 65 teams at the magic number.
One of those is Army, which has two victories against Football Championship Subdivision opponents. According to the NCAA rule on bowl selection order, the Black Knights will be placed ahead of teams with losing records even if they lose to Navy on Dec. 10 and finish 6-6. The same is true for 5-5 South Alabama, which has two games remaining.
There are 44 teams with seven losses unable to reach six wins. Not in that group is Hawaii, which is 5-7 and can reach six wins Sat- urday with a victory against Massachusetts. The Rainbow Warriors would follow Army in the selection order as determined by the NCAA.
That leaves 18 teams having an opportunity to win their way into the postseason before 5-7 teams become eligible. With 15 spots up for grabs, significant upsets would need to occur for all the bowl slots to be filled by six-win teams, likely opening the door for several 5-7 finishers to fill out bowl slots. Those candidates would be selected base on teams’ Academic Progress Rates.