Bowl eligibility
Bowl eligibility in college football at the NCAA Division I FBS level is the standard through which teams become available for selection to participate in postseason bowl games. When a team achieves this state, it is described as "bowl-eligible".
For nearly a century, bowl games were the purview of only the very best teams, but a steady proliferation of new bowl games required 70 participating teams by the 2010–11 bowl season, then 80 participating teams by the 2015–16 bowl season. As a result, the NCAA has steadily reduced the criteria for bowl eligibility, allowing teams with a non-winning record in 2010, further reducing to allow teams with outright losing records to be invited by 2012. For the 2016–17 bowl season, 25% of the bowl participants did not have a winning record.
Current regulations have also lowered the criteria to allow a team to include one win against teams in the lower FCS Division.
Teams that are bowl eligible will usually either play in one of the bowl games that its conference is affiliated with based on conference tie-ins or the team will be chosen from the pool of remaining bowl eligible teams to fill one of the at-large positions. The various reductions in the bowl eligibility criteria are discussed below.
Current criteria
For the 2018–19 bowl season, a team must meet the following criteria to participate in a bowl game:- The team must have at least as many wins as overall losses. Wins against non-Division I teams do not count toward the number of wins.
- No more than one win against an FCS team may count toward that win total, and only if the FCS team has awarded at least 90% of the scholarships that FCS rules allowed it to award over the last two years. The requirement that the FCS team must have awarded 90% of its allowed scholarships may be waived if a "unique or catastrophic situation" prevented the FCS team from meeting that requirement.
- A team that has a losing record only because it lost its conference championship game remains eligible for a bowl.
- Teams which would have met the eligibility criteria if not for the fact that they had one win against an FCS team that did not meet the scholarship requirement and no waiver was granted.
- Teams which played 13 games during the regular season and finished with a 6–7 record.
- Teams in their second year of reclassification from FCS to FBS football.
- Teams with at least 5 wins and no more than 7 losses, in order of their Academic Progress Rates.
History
Occasionally, there will be more bowl eligible teams than there are spots in the NCAA football bowl games in the season. In these cases, some bowl eligible teams will not be invited to play in any NCAA football bowl game. Typically, teams with seven or more wins will not be left out of bowl games, although there are times, most recently the 2012–13 bowl season, that see at least one such team uninvited. Before the 2010–11 bowl season, the Division I rulebook, specifically Bylaw 30.9.2.1, had several provisions that attempted to ensure that teams with seven wins will receive preference for bowl bids:
- Bowl games that have a contract with a conference must select a team with at least seven wins if one is available.
- Any bowl berths that become eligible when a conference fails to meet its contracted tie-ins must first be filled by any eligible seven-win teams before any remaining FBS 6–6 teams can be accommodated.
- Additionally, conferences are not allowed to sign contingency agreements with bowl games that would allow 6–6 teams from their conferences to receive bowl berths at the expense of any potential team with seven or more wins. While this does not prevent conferences from signing contingency agreements that are triggered when a second conference is unable to provide enough eligible teams to fill all of its contracted berths, it does not allow a 6–6 team from the contingency conference access to a bowl game over a seven win team from a third conference.
Starting with the 2011–12 bowl season, the rule that required the selection of seven-win teams before any 6–6 teams was eliminated. The first season of the new rule saw Temple go uninvited despite going 8–4, including a win over eventual Big East BCS representative Connecticut. In the 2010–11 bowl season, the UCLA Bruins were invited to a bowl game despite a losing record after playing a conference championship game, while a 7–5 winning team and a 6–6 non-losing team did not receive invites.
Like NCAA sports where a tournament determines an automatic conference bid to the postseason tournament, a team can finish with a losing record and still appear in a bowl game. In another change to bowl eligibility rules that took effect in 2010–11, a team that wins its conference but has an overall losing record must receive an NCAA waiver to appear in a bowl game. Previously, the waiver required no NCAA action. The new rule is still largely consistent with the NCAA rules in all other team sports, where a team that has a losing record that wins their conference championship through the conference tournament earns the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
The NCAA typically awarded waivers in extenuating circumstances when a 6–6 team played in a conference championship game as a result of the division winning team being ineligible because of sanctions. This prevents the conference championship game from affecting bowl eligibility of team that advances to the conference championship in case of division-winning teams being sanctioned. The Pac-12 and ACC have both used it for such division champions, UCLA in 2011 and Georgia Tech in 2012, both of which were 6–6 and advanced to the conference championship game as a result of sanctions to the division winning teams. Both lost in their conference championship games, but the NCAA awarded both waivers.
Starting with the 2013–14 bowl season, this waiver is established by rule and all 6–6 teams participating in a conference championship game will be bowl eligible.
On August 2, 2012, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors approved a significant change to the process to determine bowl eligible teams, going so far as to potentially allow 5–7 teams to go to a bowl, in case there were not enough regular bowl-eligible teams to fill every game.
If a bowl has one or more conferences/teams unable to meet their contractual commitments and there are no available bowl-eligible teams, the open spots can be filled – by the particular bowl's sponsoring agencies – as follows:
- Teams finishing 6–6 with one win against a team from the lower Football Championship Subdivision , regardless of whether that FCS school meets NCAA scholarship requirements. Until now, an FCS win counted only if that opponent met the scholarship requirements—specifically, that school had to award at least 90% of the FCS maximum of 63 scholarship equivalents over a two-year period. In the 2012 season, programs in four FCS conferences cannot meet the 90% requirement —the Ivy League, which prohibits all athletic scholarships; the Pioneer Football League and Georgetown, which do not currently award football scholarships; and the Northeast Conference, which limits football scholarships to 38 equivalents.
- 6–6 teams with two wins over FCS schools.
- Teams that finish 6–7 with loss number seven in their conference championship game.
- 6–7 teams that normally play a 13-game schedule, such as Hawaii and their home opponents. The NCAA permits Hawaii to play an additional game during the regular season to recoup its unusually high travel costs to and from the mainland. The team's opponents who play at Hawaii each season are also allowed one more game than their normal limit.
- FCS teams who are in the final year of the two-year FBS transition process, if they have at least a 6–6 record.
- Finally, 5–7 teams that have a top-five Academic Progress Rate score. This was later adjusted to allow other 5–7 teams to be selected thereafter—in order of their APR.
The 2016–17 bowl season again featured 40 bowl games, and three teams with losing records. The 2017–18 bowl season featured 39 bowl games due to the discontinuation of the Poinsettia Bowl, with all bowl slots filled by teams with winning or.500 records; UTSA at 6–5 did not receive a bowl bid, while 15 teams with 6–6 records were selected. The 2018–19 bowl season again filled all slots for 39 bowl games with teams having winning or.500 records. One team with a winning record, Southern Miss at 6–5, did not receive a bowl invitation, while there were 10 teams with 6–6 records selected.
Bowl teams with losing records
The following teams entered bowl games with losing records.| Season | Team | Record | Win Pct. | Bowl game | Result | Ref. |
| 1945 | South Carolina | 2–3–3 | 1946 Gator Bowl | L, 26–14 | ||
| 1963 | SMU | 4–6 | 1963 Sun Bowl | L, 21–14 | ||
| 1970 | William & Mary | 5–6 | 1970 Tangerine Bowl | L, 40–12 | ||
| 2001 | North Texas | 5–6 | 2001 New Orleans Bowl | L, 45–20 | ||
| 2011 | UCLA | 6–7 | 2011 Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl | L, 20–14 | ||
| 2012 | Georgia Tech | 6–7 | 2012 Sun Bowl | W, 21–7 | ||
| 2014 | Fresno State | 6–7 | 2014 Hawaii Bowl | L, 30–6 | ||
| 2015 | Nebraska | 5–7 | 2015 Foster Farms Bowl | W, 37–29 | ||
| 2015 | Minnesota | 5–7 | 2015 Quick Lane Bowl | W, 21–14 | ||
| 2015 | San Jose State | 5–7 | 2015 Cure Bowl | W, 27–16 | ||
| 2016 | Hawaii | 6–7 | 2016 Hawaii Bowl | W, 52–35 | ||
| 2016 | Mississippi State | 5–7 | 2016 St. Petersburg Bowl | W, 17–16 | ||
| 2016 | North Texas | 5–7 | 2016 Heart of Dallas Bowl | L, 38–31 |
Denotes a team that had a 6–6 regular season record, then lost their conference's championship game before playing in a bowl game.