The Latest on James Madison and Jacksonville State’s Bowl Situations (Army and Navy, too)

We’re going to get into more detail on James Madison and Jacksonville State’s bowl chances below, and we’re going to explain why we think JMU could still make a New Year’s Six bowl but needs the Sun Belt and the College Football Playoff organization to clear things up. First, though, the list.

Who to Cheer Against

For James Madison to make a bowl, either 10, 11, or 12* of these 24 teams must lose. For Jacksonville State to make a bowl, 11, 12, or 13 must lose. We’re assuming JMU gets invited to a bowl before JSU.

• Eastern Michigan
• Mississippi State
• TCU
• Nebraska
• Central Michigan
• Utah State
• UCF
• Navy
• Northern Illinois
• Rice
• Syracuse
• Old Dominion
• Louisiana
• BYU
• Illinois
• Minnesota
• Virginia Tech
• Marshall
• Washington State
• Florida
• South Carolina
• USF
• Cal
• Colorado State

*Whether the number’s 10, 11, or 12 depends on how the NCAA treats Army and Navy.

James Madison and the New Year’s Bowls

Even after yesterday’s loss, James Madison is tied with Tulane and Toledo for the second-best record among Group of Five teams. We don’t know for sure where the CFP committee would rank JMU were JMU under consideration, but they would be in the mix to finish as the top-ranked Group of Five team, especially with Tulane potentially an underdog against UTSA and/or SMU.

To receive the Group of Five’s automatic invitation to a New Year’s Six bowl (the Cotton Bowl, Peach Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl are the three a mid-major could make this year), a mid-major must be the top-ranked bowl-eligible Group of Five conference champion. Top-ranked. Bowl-eligible. Group of Five conference champion. Those are the three boxes to check.

Bowl eligibility, for JMU, is pretty simple: To become bowl-eligible, JMU needs there to be a shortage of .500 FBS teams. For that to happen, ten, eleven, or twelve of the 24 teams listed above need to lose. Which of those numbers it is depends on what the NCAA does about Army and/or Navy, which we’ll get to below.

The other two pieces are not so simple.

College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock was asked about JMU on last week’s rankings show. He said, “The committee considers all teams that are eligible to play in the postseason, and that’s where things stand.” He also said, “We will be ready to consider any team that’s eligible for postseason play.”

What this implies, taken at face value, is that the College Football Playoff—an organization separate from the NCAA—would consider James Madison for a ranking *if* enough teams lose this weekend that JMU becomes bowl-eligible. The problem is that we don’t know that for sure. Hancock said this in a live interview on ESPN, not in an official statement. He didn’t explicitly address the scenario in which JMU becomes bowl-eligible through a shortage of six-win teams. He might not even know of such a scenario—his organization deals with the top 25 teams, not teams who are 5–6. The other problem is timing. The Sun Belt will announce its championship matchup this coming weekend, once games are completed. The first rankings that could theoretically include JMU don’t come out until the following Tuesday. Unless Bill Hancock makes a clarifying statement, the Sun Belt won’t know if the committee’s willing to consider JMU until it’s too late.

Unless we greatly misunderstand the NCAA’s rules, the College Football Playoff is allowed to rank James Madison. We’re unaware of any control the NCAA has over the College Football Playoff’s business. The NCAA controls bowl eligibility. After that’s taken care of, others are in charge.

Similarly, unless we’re missing something, the NCAA doesn’t control who can and can’t play in a conference championship game. In college basketball, plenty of teams are transitioning right now from Division II to Division I and are, in a parallel situation to JMU’s, ineligible for NCAA-organized postseason play. They can’t play in the NCAA Tournament or the NIT. Some of these teams, though, are still allowed by their conferences to play in their conference tournament. If the rules are similar for football, then whether or not JMU can qualify for the Sun Belt Championship is up to the Sun Belt, not the NCAA.

What to make of all that?

The College Football Playoff committee should consider JMU for ranking this week and, for clarity, announce as much. It doesn’t matter that they’re not bowl-eligible yet. They’re likely to become bowl-eligible, and the committee has had no problem in the past ranking teams merely likely to become bowl-eligible. Most seasons, the committee includes a few 5-win teams in its first rankings. These teams aren’t bowl-eligible at the time the committee considers them. Like JMU is right now, those 5-win teams are merely likely to become bowl-eligible.

The Sun Belt should allow James Madison to play in the conference championship if it wins the East Division, and it should also announce as much. There’s little downside for the Sun Belt here. Coastal Carolina and Appalachian State—the other East contenders—each have four losses. They’re not making a New Year’s Six bowl. Troy—the West Division champion—is currently behind at least Tulane in the eyes of the committee, and possibly behind SMU, Liberty, UNLV, and Toledo. Troy’s New Year’s Six chance would improve if given the opportunity to rematch with JMU. Beat JMU, and they’d rise. Beat Coastal Carolina, and they probably wouldn’t. There is awkwardness involved (App State would be mathematically eliminated were JMU named conference championship-eligible by the Sun Belt), but allowing JMU a chance to win the East and play for the Sun Belt championship would be best for the Sun Belt as a whole. If our understanding of the rules is correct, the Sun Belt got itself into this mess by not being clearer sooner. They shouldn’t continue to shoot themselves in the foot just to avoid pissing off App State.

Probability, and the Army/Navy Piece of This

Army and Navy are in a weird situation. Army is 5–6. Navy is 5–5 and a heavy underdog against SMU. The two have yet to play, so one will finish 6–6 and the other will finish 5–7. Complicating matters further, Army played two FCS opponents, and you only get to count one of those towards bowl eligibility. Complicating matters even further than that, bowl matchups are going to be announced before the Army/Navy game is played.

If Navy wins this week, Navy is bowl-eligible. If Navy loses, there will either have to be a contingency plan involving scenarios in which Navy finishes 6–6 or the NCAA will have to preemptively make Navy bowl-eligible. Even if Navy wins, the NCAA has a decision to make about Army. To our knowledge, there’s been no statement on either.

The NCAA has a process for determining who becomes bowl-eligible and who doesn’t in the event of a shortage of .500 teams. As of 2019, the list went like this:

1. Teams with six wins who beat two FCS opponents.*
2. Teams who finished 6–7, including conference championship games.
3. Teams in their final year of transitioning from the FCS to the FBS who have otherwise met all requirements.
4. Teams who finished with five wins but have a good APR** score.

*There is other language here about the FCS opponent in question, so it’s possible this wouldn’t apply to Army.
**APR stands for Academic Progress Rate. It’s a metric the NCAA uses.

The list does not address five-win teams who have a regular season game left to play after bowl matchups are determined. We don’t know where those stand. That’s what we’re waiting for the NCAA to address. Our guess is that because Army beat two FCS teams, they won’t receive a waiver ahead of JMU and JSU. We’re not sure, though, and we’re less confident about Navy.

We have a college football model, and it’s been helping us determine JMU and JSU’s respective bowl eligibility probabilities. Lately, we’ve been coding the model to err on the side of not overstating their probabilities. After a very good week for bubble teams (therefore a bad week for JMU and JSU), the model is showing a 71% probability JMU is granted bowl eligibility and a 53% probability JSU is invited to a bowl. (We think each would be granted bowl eligibility at the same time but that any bowl would invite JMU before JSU, so JMU is effectively ahead of JSU on the pecking order. Also, JMU reportedly bests JSU in APR, so if that’s the tiebreaker, JMU is ahead of JSU.)

71% and 53% are higher than 50%. 71% is especially good. Even in this worst-case scenario, the one in which the NCAA prioritizes both 5–6 Navy and 5–6 Army ahead of JMU, JMU has a good chance of making a bowl game. The chance might be even better, though. If the NCAA places Navy ahead of JMU/JSU but places JMU/JSU ahead of Army, JMU and JSU’s respective probabilities climb to 82% and 68%. If the NCAA tries to split the middle and says that a bowl can set aside a place for the Army/Navy winner (an idea many have suggested in this scenario in which both are 5–6), the probabilities are still 82% and 68%. If the NCAA places JMU/JSU ahead of both Navy and Army on the priority list, the probabilities climb to 92% and 82%.

We don’t know what the NCAA will do about this. The last time a team entered the Army/Navy game at 5–6 and hadn’t played two FCS opponents, it was 2009. That year had a different situation, because there was no shortage of bowl-eligible teams, but from what we can find, it appears the NCAA let Army try to earn its bowl eligibility, with the EagleBank Bowl setting up a contingency plan in which 6–6 Army got the spot first but 6–6 UCLA took it if Army didn’t reach 6–6 (Army lost to Navy, so UCLA played in the bowl). Last year, Army entered the Army/Navy game at 5–6 but had beaten two FCS teams, and the NCAA did not give Army a waiver. There *was* a shortage of bowl-eligible teams last year, but Rice got in by APR rather than Army getting a chance at qualifying at 6–6, implying that either the priority list from above has changed since 2019, that one of Army’s FCS opponents didn’t meet the grants-in-aid requirement, or that the Army/Navy game no longer counts towards bowl eligibility.

Our best guess, considering all of this, is that JMU and JSU are ahead of both Navy and Army on the waiver priority order. But we don’t know that for sure.

So.

There are 67 bowl-eligible teams and 82 bowl slots. 25 5-win teams are still trying to make it to 6–6. 24 of those play this weekend. If 14 win and 10 lose, that’s 81 bowl-eligible teams, and JMU is still safe. But. If Navy still isn’t among those 81 and the NCAA allows Navy to earn bowl eligibility against Army, that could be 82. If Navy *is* among those 81 and the NCAA allows Army to earn bowl eligibility against Navy, that could also be 82. If the NCAA goes absolutely bananas, I suppose you could see Army and Navy both granted bowl eligibility at 5–6 ahead of JMU and JSU. That’s how we get our worst-case number above. Really, JMU probably needs 10 or 11 teams to lose, and JSU probably needs 11 or 12. Our model says the probability of at least 10 losing is 92%, and that the probability of at least 11 losing is 82%, and that the probability of at least 12 losing is 71%. It was a bad week for both JMU and JSU, in many ways, but they’re still each likelier than not to make a bowl.

The Hater’s List

If you’re cheering for James Madison and Jacksonville State to make bowl games, or you simply want to maximize the number of 5–7 teams playing in bowls, here’s your list, with times, channels, and our model’s probability of the desired team losing.

Even in the worst-case scenario, JMU and JSU are in if all the favorites win.