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We’re starting to see teams achieve bowl eligibility, with nine teams already across the six-win threshold. We’re also getting more clarity on what the approximately 35 non-Playoff FBS bowls will be named, with the Camellia Bowl announcing today it had finally secured a title sponsorship, renaming itself the IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl. The only thing left is to figure out which conferences have ties to which bowls. From the looks of it…this is going to hurt.
We tried our hand last year at semi-automated bowl projections. We were curious how the system worked, we had the impression it was straightforward, and we dreamed of joining the 19 other bowl projectors referenced weekly on the Rivals.com sites of mediocre AAC schools. We thought bowl projections might drive some clicks. Turns out, it took upwards of an hour each week, it was a headache and a half, and our best efforts ended up being highly inaccurate because the ACC may have violated some contracts and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl traded for West Virginia.
What we learned from the exercise was this: There are contracts. Those contracts’ details are not widely reported. The actual bowl selections take place on a bunch of conference calls and in backrooms at ESPN Events, which owns and operates a large share of the bowls. Bowl projections are not like CFP, NCAAT, or even NIT bracketology, a system you can systematically predict. Bowl projections are like projecting the Maui Invitational field: There are some loose regulations that need to be met, but most of this is insider reporting.
Still…man. It hurts! We want those pageviews! We want to make a graphic on Instagram showing Louisiana-Monroe playing in the IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl and pray it gets twenty likes.
So, journey with us here as we try to figure out which bowls are tied to which conferences.
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As we said above, there are approximately 35 non-Playoff FBS bowls this year. I say approximately because it’s possible they’ll add one. That’s happened before, if memory serves me correctly. I believe the city of Frisco was involved, a detail which is making our NIT and Conference USA readers knowingly nod their heads. The Playoff is easy to predict, as is the Celebration Bowl, which is a semi-formal HBCU national championship played between the champions of two FCS conferences, the SWAC and the MEAC. The Playoff and the Celebration Bowl make up eight bowls in what’s commonly called a 43-bowl cohort. We’re focusing on the other 35.
We’re going to start with the Power Four, because our impression last year became that the then-Power Five conferences had strong bowl ties and at least something like a formal system for determining who played where. A quick search yields confirmation from the Big 12, something resembling confirmation from the ACC, and useful undisputed reporting about the situations involving the ten power conference schools who changed conferences this year. The short version is that former Pac-12 schools are still tied to old Pac-12 bowls this year and next year, but that Texas and Oklahoma aren’t tied to old Big 12 bowls. You may notice that we linked to Brett McMurphy’s reporting twice in there. He, to our knowledge, is the best source for actual bowl information, and we’ll be using his own bowl projections to try to confirm our impressions as we go through this process. We aren’t sure we can trust ESPN’s (they seem to be projecting what they want to see, rather than what we’re likeliest to see), and Sports Illustrated’s website used to make one of our computers crash.
Step 1: What the Big 12 Tells Us
That Big 12 link above is helpful because it not only gives us the Big 12 bowl list, but it also gives us the ties for the Old Pac-12, acknowledging publicly what that reporting said about Old Pac-12 teams staying tied to old Pac-12 bowls.
The Big 12’s twelve pre-2024 teams are theoretically tied to 21 different bowls, but 15 of those are included under “SERVPRO First Responder Bowl or ESPN Events Pool Games.” In addition to those 15, we have the…
- Texas Bowl
- Alamo Bowl
- Pop-Tarts Bowl
- Liberty Bowl
- Armed Forces Bowl
- Guaranteed Rate Bowl
I’ve put those six in order from latest to earliest, but our impression is that the Alamo Bowl and Pop-Tarts Bowl (and maybe the Liberty Bowl) pick earlier than the others. We don’t have a lot of details. Anyway, the Big 12 will most likely send teams to those six bowls.
The Old Pac-12’s teams, per the Big 12, are tied to six different bowls themselves:
- Sun Bowl
- Independence Bowl
- Alamo Bowl
- Holiday Bowl
- Las Vegas Bowl
- LA Bowl Hosted by Gronk
Again, we’re not positive in what order those bowls pick (that’s a process for another day—maybe next week), but their pool seems to be the teams from the Old Pac-12. One of the six—the Alamo Bowl—is scheduled to feature an Old Pac-12 team and a team from the Big 12 Twelve. I believe bowls try at pretty much all costs to avoid regular season rematches (though I don’t think this is mandated by rule?), and I would imagine they’ll try to avoid putting two current Big 12 teams in the same bowl, but something to keep an eye on.
So far, we have one bowl matchup confirmed:
- Alamo Bowl: Big 12 Twelve vs. Old Pac-12
Step 2: What the ACC Will Tell Us
With the ACC, we’re getting older information. It comes from a page that appears to have last been updated in 2020, possibly before Covid forced any American lockdowns. I believe the information is current enough for our purposes, because I’m not seeing anything indicate otherwise, and our impression is that any bowl with an ACC tie can take Notre Dame if Notre Dame’s available. One nice thing here: The ACC includes which conference they’re playing in said bowl. So, two birds with one stone.
There are complications here. What the ACC website refers to as the Cheez-It Bowl is now the Pop-Tarts Bowl. The Outback Bowl (now the ReliaQuest Bowl) comes with a note referencing the four-team playoff. Still, we believe the ACC has ties to these twelve bowls, with designated conference opponents in parentheses. (One more note: The last three on the list evidently get one ACC team, combined.)
- Pop-Tarts Bowl (Big 12 Twelve)
- Duke’s Mayo Bowl (Old Big Ten)
- Fenway Bowl (AAC)
- Military Bowl (AAC)
- Pinstripe Bowl (Old Big Ten)
- ReliaQuest Bowl?
- Holiday Bowl (Old Pac-12)
- Gator Bowl (SEC)
- Sun Bowl (Old Pac-12)
- Gasparilla Bowl
- SERVPRO First Responder Bowl
- Birmingham Bowl
From reporting last year, we believe that the Gator Bowl, Holiday Bowl, and Pop-Tarts Bowl pick first, though the ReliaQuest Bowl may have an automatic draw earlier than even those three. Our impression at the time was that those three bowls could pick anyone within one conference win of the best team available. Again: It was a fiasco.
After scrubbing this list against McMurphy’s current projections, we can confirm that we’re seeing the ACC in nine of those twelve bowls. The Gasparilla Bowl/First Responder Bowl/Birmingham Bowl trio does get one ACC team in McMurphy’s projection, and the ReliaQuest Bowl (the next item on our list) gets no ACC team. The result is that we can confirm eight more bowl matchups, bringing our total to nine. (The * next to ACC is there so we remember Notre Dame is part of this mix, while Cal and Stanford aren’t.)
- Duke’s Mayo Bowl: ACC* vs. Old Big Ten
- Gator Bowl: ACC* vs. SEC
- Sun Bowl: ACC* vs. Old Pac-12
- Military Bowl: ACC* vs. AAC
- Pop-Tarts Bowl: ACC* vs. Big 12 Twelve
- Pinstripe Bowl: ACC* vs. Old Big Ten
- Fenway Bowl: ACC* vs. AAC
- Holiday Bowl: ACC* vs. Old Pac-12
As with the Alamo Bowl, we’d doubt the Holiday Bowl or Sun Bowl would pit two current conference foes against one another. The conferences themselves want to avoid that, and the conferences have a lot of say here.
To be continued…
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Unfortunately, we’re going to have to pick this back up tomorrow. We’ve run out of time for today, with games kicking off in about half an hour. Some sparknotes on tonight’s action:
Troy at South Alabama: Troy is the defending Sun Belt champ, but they’re 1–5 this season, their only win coming against FCS Florida A&M. South Alabama had a lot of hype last year, less hype this year, a little hype again after scoring 135 points in a two-week stretch, and now no hype after losing two in a row while scoring 13 points per game. This is the bad end of Sun Belt football. It was not supposed to be that.
Kennesaw State at Middle Tennessee: This is the bad end of Conference USA football, and Conference USA is the bad end of the FBS. You can do the math from there. Kennesaw State’s looking for its first win as an FBS team. Former Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason is looking to get MTSU its first win over an FBS team this year. These two are a combined 1–10, but that’ll improve to 2–11 tonight.
Louisiana Tech at New Mexico State: NMSU also has yet to beat an FBS team on the season, and they’ve given up 30 or more points to every FBS opponent they’ve played, with a median final score of 48–13 in those five games. They have not played anyone from a power conference. This is happening against fellow mid-majors. Louisiana Tech got their first win over an FBS team last week, taking down MTSU. Almost everyone has to get one eventually.
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We’ll be back tomorrow with more on the bowl ties and a little on the potentially consequential Western Kentucky/Sam Houston matchup. Then, on Thursday, we’ll have our Week 8 preview. Until then:
Bark.
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