Well, we have arrived at bowl season. The season of hope and destruction. Depending on your point of view, this can be a season of indifference as teams such as Florida and Nebraska bring their teams forward with new coaches. It can be a time of rebuilding as expectations were not met in the regular season and now a cornerstone for the future is possible.
This is also a season of challenges as the mid-major conferences get to go head-to-head with some of the major players to see how competitive their program might be in relation to a middle of the pack major conference player. The poster child for all things mid-major would be Boise State who qualified for a major New Year’s bowl game against a very good Pac-12 team in Arizona. The Wildcats should watch some footage of Oklahoma and TCU in Fiesta Bowls gone by if they think Boise State is just going to cave in quietly.
Pundits continue to rail about which conference is ultimately the best and there are ACC fans who take exception to hearing all about the superiority of the SEC. Big Ten fans continue to feel the pressure from all fronts as they posture for a higher status within the realm of the big five conferences. Well, come January 12th we will have a firm sense of which conference ultimately gets to hold that swagger in their court.
In 2013, the SEC had ten representatives and fashioned a tidy 70% winning margin, albeit they lost the Championship to Florida State and Alabama went down to Oklahoma in the other BCS bowl. The Pac-12 was 6-3 for 67%, Big Ten 2-5 for 29%, and the Big Twelve 3-3 for another 50% spot. Surprisingly, the ACC was a paltry 5-6 at 46%, but claimed the national championship and both of their BCS matches. These statistics now mean nothing moving into December 20th when there are an incredible 38 bowl matches and one title game for all the bragging rights that the NCAA promised moving forward.
The SEC leads the way with 12 of their 14 teams participating in the bowl season. Add to this statistic that only the SEC has three teams that qualified for the six pack on New Years. Following right behind that group is the ACC with 11 participants roving all over North America to win one of those multitude of bowl games. The Big 12 sent seven of their ten teams and the Pac-12 replied with eight schools, while the Big Ten sent ten teams although they do have 14 in the conference. A little confusing perhaps, but it should provide a nice barometer for the Power Five moving forward into year two of the playoff format.
There are a few newer programs to FBS that get to eat some rare disappointment as they qualify for a bowl position and get left out in the cold. Teams like Georgia Southern, Appalachian State and Texas State were all bowl eligible by definition, but one of the quirky natures of the NCAA is that you have to serve a short period of time within the FBS before becoming truly bowl eligible. This must have been particularly frustrating for Georgia Southern who went undefeated within their conference and had a sparkling 9-3 record overall.
Old Dominion also took a leap of faith and had a great first season in Conference USA with a 6-6 (4-4) record to move forward. Perhaps it would have been nice to send Middle Tennessee to a bowl game, but Conference USA and its bowl affiliations dried up quickly. It also would have been a wonderful if UAB would have been able to close out their football program with one last bowl invite.
Temple from the AAC along with Ohio University from the MAC were also left off of the docket due to constraints within the selection process, even though both of those squads fought mightily to become bowl eligible. With 39 bowl games and 76 open spots for 128 programs it becomes difficult to fit all teams in when more qualify then slots allow.
Hopefully your school got their just desserts and will have a great bowl game. The New Orleans Bowl, which opens bowl season this year, is a little more than a week away.
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