Rather than have 8 teams that finished 6-6 or better sitting at home because of the whims of bowl directors (or because of silly rules that prevent 9-3 conference champions who play a full FBS schedule from going to a bowl because they're new), why not just have the 38 official bowls, and then set a few more up ad hoc once we know how many eligible teams there are?

For example, CUSA and the Sun Belt could set up a game in Atlanta between Georgia Southern and Middle Tennessee, either at the Georgia Dome (surely they could find a day), or if necessary, at Georgia Tech's stadium.

You could also set up these matchups:
Ohio vs. Temple in Pittsburgh
UAB vs. Texas State in Jackson, MS
Appalachian State vs. Old Dominion at one of the stadiums in North Carolina

Granted, none of these games would be setting attendance records, but they should sell enough tickets and generate TV dollars to at least break even for the conferences who set them up, and this way bowl eligible teams wouldn't be locked out of bowls. Give the new "bowls" a snazzy names, and the casual fans wouldn't even realize these bowls were created on the fly a couple weeks beforehand.

There would still be the issue of what to do with an odd number of eligible teams -- either we'd still leave 1 team out or take one 5-7 team, but either of those is preferable to leaving out 8 teams over circumstances beyond their control.

Because the SEC, Big XII, ACC, and Pac-10 would kill their lower paying bowl contracts and camp out at home or a nearby friendly stadium and make it a quasi or actual home game.

(12-09-2014 10:16 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Because the SEC, Big XII, ACC, and Pac-10 would kill their lower paying bowl contracts and camp out at home or a nearby friendly stadium and make it a quasi or actual home game.

Right, it's been suggested. One of the Big Ten ADs proposed a couple of years ago that bowls be set up for 6-6 teams on an ad hoc basis right after the end of the regular season, matching teams that are geographically close in a game at the stadium of one of the two teams. I think the example he used was that if Illinois and Missouri were both 6-6 they could play each other in Columbia instead of each spending a few hundred thousand bucks to send their entire contingents to a bowl game in Texas. And they wouldn't lose the TV exposure, because ESPN would be happy to televise it just like any other bowl game.

It would work just as well for any FBS teams, whether or not they're 6-6. This year Utah State is playing UTEP in the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque -- would be a lot less expensive for them to play each other a few hundred miles further south in El Paso and call it a bowl game.