After last week's games, 72 teams were eligible for the 82 postseason slots. An additional 20 teams were sitting at 5 wins, needing a win this week to become bowl eligible. Of those teams, 8 are matched up with each other (Florida v. Florida St., Maryland v. Rutgers, Middle Tennessee State v. Florida Atlantic, Charlotte at Old Dominion) and will contribute a bowl-eligible team, bringing the guaranteed total up to 76. Ignoring those, this week features 12 teams seeking to fill the 6 remaining slots. Four of those teams have already played, with 3 losing.
- San Jose State -- L
- TCU -- L
- South Alabama -- L
- Ball State -- W
Thus, going into today, there are 8 teams playing for 5 slots (all times Eastern):
- Troy (at Georgia State, 2:00)
- North Texas (hosts #22 UTSA at 2:00)
- Virginia Tech (at Virginia, 3:45)
- Tulsa (at SMU, 4:00)
- LSU (hosts #15 Texas A&M at 7:00)
- West Virginia (at Kansas, 7:00)
- Memphis (hosts Tulane, 7:30)
- Syracuse (hosts #17 Pitt, 7:30)
Also, if USC or Cal gets win #5 this week, they play next week and could get to 6.
If there aren't enough eligible teams, the tiebreaker is APR ranking. I haven't looked at where we stand this year, but we tend to be towards the top (but not AT the top) on that list. Thus, we probably need there to be more than one open slot.
It doesn't look good for Texas to make a bowl game. Of course, some see that as a positive and some see it as a negative.
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Last edited: Nov 27, 2021