The College Football Tiebreaker No One is Talking About
Will a sub-.500 team make a bowl game, and why should they?
With the addition of the Cure Bowl in Orlando and the Arizona Bowl in Tucson to the college bowl system, the total number of bowl games for the 2015 college football season is 40. The ever-growing monetization of college football gives sponsors an incentive to create obscure bowl games, which apparently have become very easy to organize. I’ve put together an informational table below to illustrate the growth of the bowl system over the past nine years.
As you can see, the number of bowl games has grown from 30 to 40 in less than a decade. Extrapolating from the data we have to date, we can expect that the FBS will be five teams short of the necessary 80 teams to fill the allotted bowl games, which would be the first time this has happened. But don’t worry, because in the case there are not enough 0.500+ teams to fill the all of the bowl games, the NCAA has the following tiered tiebreaking process:
1. Teams that finished 6–6, but had a win over an unqualified FCS school.
2. Teams that finished 6–6, but have two wins over FCS schools. (BC and UNC played two FCS schools)
3. Teams that finish 6–7 with loss number seven in their conference championship game (UCLA-2011, Georgia Tech-2012, and Fresno State-2014).
4. Teams that finished 6–7 in a regular, 13-game schedule (Teams that play Hawaii can schedule a 13th game).
5. Teams that are in the process of reclassifying to FBS and finish with a record that would have made them eligible otherwise. (UNC-Charlotte is reclassifying)
6. Teams that finish 5–7 in (Academic Progress Report) APR order. A bowl game can only take a team out of the emergency pool once every four years.
Wait a second, what is APR? Basically, it’s meant as a way to measure graduation rates, among other factors. The maximum score is 1000, while the minimum to avoid sanctions is 930 (about a 50% graduation rate of scholarship players). Why couldn’t it simply be a graduation rate? I’m not sure. But based on the tiebreakers above it, APR may very well be a deciding factor for which sub-.500 team makes a bowl game.
After Week 11, the bowl picture for 2015 is starting to become clearer. There are 62 teams currently bowl eligible and 18 teams that have been eliminated from bowl consideration. This leaves 48 teams battling for the final 18 bowl slots (assuming that a 5–7 team can indeed reach a bowl game). The teams that have less than six wins and less than eight losses are listed in the table below, along with their APR score.
Will a 5–7 team reach a bowl game?
Most likely yes! After using ESPN’s FPI to model future game results, it appears likely that the NCAA will need to take three teams with 5–7 records to fill remaining bowl slots. I’ve re-ordered those same 48 teams based on projected finish in the table below, then ranked based on their APR to determine which teams would make the cut.
Nebraska has the highest APR of the teams that are fighting for bowl eligibility. Therefore, due to the excessive number of bowl games, Nebraska will likely go to a bowl game even with a loss to Iowa, their only remaining game this season.
At the end of the season, college fans should question a system that sends teams with losing records to bowl games. Why should we endure the celebration of mediocrity? Shouldn’t we hold teams to a higher standard? Will loyal Nebraska fans travel to a bowl game to see their 5–7 team play? This small, non-discussed tiebreaking system may soon be in the spotlight, and rightly so.
