26 Teams That Should Not Have Gone Bowling
With 36 bowl games last season, 72 teams went to bowls out of 119 schools in the FBS. In order to have so many bowl games, the NCAA has made it much easier for schools to become bowl eligible, allowing some very questionable teams be rewarded for a bad season.
Now, it is nice for the players to have a week of play and a final game when they have had a good season. Mostly, it allows ESPN to have more games and allows the fatcats to get more perks and benefits.
The current low standards for bowl games cheapens all bowl games. It allows teams to argue that the played a lot of bowl teams in the regular season when many of those same teams did not deserve to be there.
I purpose making a simple requirement for bowl eligibility: .500 in conference play and seven wins against FBS schools.
With the twelve game season, it is silly that a team could get the reward for a good season by having a losing season in conference or by playing an extremely weak schedule, full of FCS schools.
If the NCAA wants six wins against FBS schools to be enough for bowl eligibility, then we ought to return to eleven game seasons.
Last year, to fill the 72 bowl slots, every single bowl eligible team under the current rules was given a bowl berth (with Northern Illinois being the very last squad available).
Of the 72 bowl teams, 26 failed to meat my new requirements. As such, 13 bowls should be dissolved, as bowl games should only be for winners.
Just by eliminating those with a losing record, we would have six less bowl teams and three less bowls, a good start.
Adding those with less than six wins against FBS schools would take out another seven, eliminating four more bowl games.
By conference, the two worst offenders are the ACC with five undeserving squads and the SEC with four undeserving squads. The Pac 10 had no undeserving teams in its undefeated bowl season.
Last year's undeserving teams are (with number of wins versus FBS schools and conference record if applicable):
ACC(5): Clemson 5; Florida State 6; Maryland 6; Miami (FLA) 5; North Carolina State 5
Big East(3): Connecticut 6 (3-4); Rutgers 6; South Florida 6 (2-5)
Big 10(2): Minnesota 6 (3-5); Wisconsin (3-5) 6
Big 12: Kansas 6
Conference USA(3): Houston 6; Memphis 5; Southern Mississippi 6
Independent: Notre Dame 6
MAC: Northern Illinois 5
Mountain West(2): Air Force 6; Colorado State 5
SEC(4): Kentucky 4 (2-6); LSU 6 (3-5); South Carolina 6; Vanderbilt 6;
Sunbelt(2): Florida Atlantic 5; Troy 6
WAC(2): Hawaii 6; Louisiana Tech 6
Note: Western Kentucky was not counted as an FBS school, as are in transition.
