The NCAA’s Football Oversight Committee on Thursday voted to adopt a proposal that allows conferences the flexibility to choose a 5-7 team that has met certain academic standards to fill bowl game opportunities if there aren’t enough deserving teams.
Under the proposal, if all deserving teams have been selected for bowl games and all schools who meet an exception other than the exception for 5-7 teams have been selected, a conference that has an unfulfilled bowl commitment can choose which of its 5-7 teams will participate in that bowl. The conference must choose a 5-7 team that has achieved at least the minimum 930 multiyear Academic Progress Rate required to be eligible to participate in the postseason.
Currently, if a 5-7 team needs to be selected to participate, those teams become available as alternates in descending order of their multiyear APR.
Bowl season executive director Nick Carparelli told ESPN in January that there were 41 FBS bowl games last season, including the six College Football Playoff bowls. That left 70 teams that played in non-CFP bowls, and only three of them were below the .500 bowl-eligibility mark at 5-7. Carparelli said that over the past five seasons, an average of 81 teams played in FBS bowls with a 6-6 record or better.
The proposal is not final until it’s reviewed by the Division I Cabinet during its June meeting.
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