5-7 bowl teams

[Cap'n Geech]

People are saying if Ole Miss wins the Egg Bowl they will get a bowl game at 5-7 based on their APR of 978.

There will be 78 bowl teams. 64 teams are already bowl eligible. That leaves 14 bowl slots available.

The following teams are likely to win 6 games:

TEAM	PROBABILITY OF 6 WINS
Kentucky	99.0%
Buffalo	96.3%
Tennessee	94.8%
Missouri*	93.6%
Liberty**	90.4%
Washington State	88.1%
TCU	86.0%
Michigan State	79.2%
Arizona State	78.1%
Charlotte	77.2%
Eastern Michigan	73.8%
North Carolina	69.8%
Cal	67.2%
Mississippi State***	63.5%
Fresno State	56.6%
Army	54.6%

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*-Missouri is appealing a bowl ban.
**-Liberty has 6 wins but needs 7 wins to be bowl eligible based on only being able to count one win vs. FCS opponents.
***-If State wins the Egg Bowl, Ole Miss will not reach 5 wins.

The following teams have 5 wins AND a better APR than Ole Miss:

TEAM	APR
Boston College	989
Arizona State	980
Cal	979

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The following teams are likely to win 5 games AND have a better APR than Ole Miss:

TEAMS	PROBABILITY OF 5 WINS	APR
Ohio	98.9%	981
Stanford	63.4%	986
Duke	52.9%	992

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There are 22 other teams with an outside chance to reach 6 wins. Middle Tennessee has an outside chance to reach 5 wins with a better APR than Ole Miss.

Note: Probabilities based on ESPN's FPI.

Let's assume Ole Miss wins the Egg Bowl. Let's assume Missouri's appeal is denied before bowl selection. Let's assume Stanford, Fresno State, Army, and Duke all fail to reach the necessary number of wins. In that scenario, Ole Miss would not go to a bowl. I don't blame Ole Miss for telling their players win and you're going to a bowl game, but I don't see it happening. Can anyone tell me where I'm missing something?

Of course I'm hoping we make all of this a moot point on Thanksgiving.

EDITED: As 00Dawg pointed out, the Pac-12 doesn't allow 5-7 bowl teams. Arizona State and Cal should get to 6 wins, but Stanford is likely to only win 5 games. My scenario still holds because I wasn't counting Stanford as a bowl team.

 

[Go Budaw]

Personally, I don’t really care if they go to a bowl or not. Losing to them for the 3rd consecutive time in Starkville when they are strolling in with zero road wins and only 4 wins on the year would be bad enough.

 

[tatedog]

And if we get to a bowl with wins over Kentucky, USM, ULaLa, Oral Roberts Western, and Arkansas, nobody else should ever care about making a bowl again either.

 

[RocketDawg]

What is our APR?

 

[Nunya.sixpack]

24.5% but I hear we can transfer to another card with better rates.

 

[DesotoCountyDawg]

I thought they couldn’t go because of probation.

 

[Cap'n Geech]

976. We have to beat Ole Miss to make a bowl for sure.

 

[00Dawg]

PAC12 teams must win 6 games to accept a bowl bid.

Conference policy. No APR worries with them.

 

[Cap'n Geech]

You're right. I edited my post. Thanks.

 

[patdog]

Good for the PAC-12.

 

[hailstate19]

The bowl system is so watered down. 7-6 should be the very minimum to make a bowl.

 

[seshomoru]

7-6 would be a very hard regular season record to reach given the 12 game schedule.

Never understood people complaining about more football. They are just fun trips for a lot of guys to play with their team one last time. Get a little swag, get a few extra practices for the underclassmen. There are only three games that actually matter at that point anyway. On top of that... no body is forcing anyone to watch. Are people that bothered that two 6-6 G5 teams get to take a vacation with their team mates in December?

 

[Go Budaw]

7-6 would be a very hard regular season record to reach given the 12 game schedule.

Never understood people complaining about more football. They are just fun trips for a lot of guys to play with their team one last time. Get a little swag, get a few extra practices for the underclassmen. There are only three games that actually matter at that point anyway. On top of that... no body is forcing anyone to watch. Are people that bothered that two 6-6 G5 teams get to take a vacation with their team mates in December?

I don’t think anyone complains about it from the perspective of not wanting to watch more football. The complaints arise from using a bowl game appearance as a metric of program success, and how blurry that line is now. If we went 5-7 in 2017, it would have been back-to-back losing seasons and we would have fired our coach, and we still could have conceivably had back-to-back bowl appearances. Crazy to think about.

The bottom 10-15 bowl games in the pecking order have essentially become the equivalent of making the NIT or CBI in college basketball. But since there’s no clear dividing line beyond CFP / NY6, a 5-7 team that plays in the St. Petersburg bowl and a 9-3 team that plays in the Capital One bowl have the same accomplishment on paper a few years down the road.

 

[seshomoru]

Seems to me like firing a coach after having back to back 5-7 bowl seasons would be the opposite of using bowl games to measure success. And it seems like there has always been a sliding scale of how successful you were based on the bowl you went to. No one really cares about those early December ones. The SEC isn't even slotted for those. Did you make it to one of the lower slots? Sure it counts for a consecutive streak or whatever, but did you get there on the way up or down. Next level of success has always been getting to a New Years Day bowl. Next step now is one the four CFP bowls not involved in the actual playoff that year. Next I think, for the SEC anyway, is getting to the conference championship. Then it's getting into the playoff.

I do like the lower tier bowls, because that should be our new normal low that allows for more practice and one last ride for the seniors. Our new normal "normal" should be in that Gator, Belk, whatever range. Past that, get a generational qb or defense and get to a Big 6. Catch all the lightning and find our way to Atlanta would be the cherry on top.

 

[The Situation]

Seems to me like firing a coach after having back to back 5-7 bowl seasons would be the opposite of using bowl games to measure success. And it seems like there has always been a sliding scale of how successful you were based on the bowl you went to. No one really cares about those early December ones. The SEC isn't even slotted for those. Did you make it to one of the lower slots? Sure it counts for a consecutive streak or whatever, but did you get there on the way up or down. Next level of success has always been getting to a New Years Day bowl. Next step now is one the four CFP bowls not involved in the actual playoff that year. Next I think, for the SEC anyway, is getting to the conference championship. Then it's getting into the playoff.

I do like the lower tier bowls, because that should be our new normal low that allows for more practice and one last ride for the seniors. Our new normal "normal" should be in that Gator, Belk, whatever range. Past that, get a generational qb or defense and get to a Big 6. Catch all the lightning and find our way to Atlanta would be the cherry on top.

The sliding scale is the problem for most people. Take 2011 for instance. We go 6-6 and make a bowl game, against a 12 game schedule with no OOC P5 opponent. People tell us we don't deserve a bowl game, yet we beat a team that beat 10-2 USM, who was lauded as a BCS buster before that. There's no standard for success. Then people say to play a harder schedule, but there's no reward for that, and it makes it harder to make a bowl, but then they say bowls don't count. This sliding scale just creates chaos all over.

I say get rid of the bowls, or get rid of the 6 win requirement and start basing it off better metrics, but not all 6-6's are equal, as we all know (but pretend to not care). Or keep the 6 wins, cut down on the number of bowls and accomplish both.

An idea for better TV is to put all the bowls on the same couple of weekends in late December or January, in order to create another 'football weekend', so you can do Gameday and everything else. I think that would help overall interest.

 

[seshomoru]

An idea for better TV is to put all the bowls on the same couple of weekends in late December or January, in order to create another 'football weekend', so you can do Gameday and everything else. I think that would help overall interest.

I agree with this. Basically have what would amount to a G5 football weekend with some Friday and Saturday night games. Follow it up with the NYE and NYD bigger games. Two good last of the year times to binge some extra college football. Random Tuesday nights in December are a terrible time to televise a lower tier bowl.