(11-24-2021 07:37 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(11-23-2021 10:27 PM)Bronco14 Wrote:  Western Michigan hits 7 w/ a W over Northern Illinois tonight, I'd say they're a lock.

Ball St hits 6, we'll see.

And with WMU's win last night, no MAC team has fewer than four losses.

It seems like every year, the MAC has a huge cluster of 7-5/6-6 type teams.

looks like 1st of the 5-6 teams will fall in San Jose St.

got 12 left with 5 needed to win.

MAC BOWLS - 2021 (6 + 3 potentials):
- Bahamas Bowl
- Lending Tree Bowl
- Idaho Potato Bowl
- Cameillia Bowl
- Detroit Bowl
- Arizona Bowl
* Myrtle Beach Bowl (AAC/MAC/Sun Belt)
* Frisco Bowl (Any G5 vs Any G5)
* Cure Bowl (Any G5 vs Any G5 or Army)

But we'll all at 6-6 make Any bowl if the # of teams run out at 6-6 or above (up to 82).

Projected # who'll make it to a bowl, outside the MAC:
* = Already In
- = Count on them getting to 6W
~ = Maybe
X = Won't happen (solid upset required)

-----------------------------------------------------

AAC (6 teams):
* Cinci, Houston, SMU, ECU, UCF
- Memphis (5-6; Tulane W [-6])
X Tulsa (5-6; @SMU L [+6.5])

ACC (10-11 teams):
* Wake, Clemson, NC State, Boston College, Pitt, Virginia, Louisville, UNC, Miami
~ VaTech (5-6; @Virginia W/L [+7])
~ Florida State (5-6; @Florida W/L [+2.5])
X Syracuse (5-6; Pitt L [+13])

B12 (7 teams):
* Oklahoma, OK-State, Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State, Texas Tech
- West Virginia (5-6; @Kansas W [-15.5])
X TCU (5-6; @Iowa State L [+15])

B1G (9 teams):
* Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Purdon't
~ Maryland (5-6; @Rutgers W/L [-1.5])
~ Rutgers (5-6; Maryland W/L [+1.5])

CUSA (7 teams):
- UTSA, UAB, UTEP, Western Kentucky, Marshall
~ Charlotte (5-6; @Old-Dom W/L [+9.5])
~ Old Dom (5-6; Charlotte W/L [-9.5])
~ Florida Atlantic (5-6; MTSU W/L [-3.5])
~ MTSU (5-6; @Florida Atlantic W/L [+3.5])
X North Texas (5-6; UTSA L [+10.5])

INDEPENDENT (4 teams):
* Notre Dame, BYU, Liberty, Army

MOUNTAIN WEST (7 teams):
* Utah, Air Force, Boise, San Diego St, Fresno St, Nevada, Wyoming
X San Jose State (5-6; Fresno St L)

PAC12 (6 teams):
* Oregon, Oregon St, Utah, Arizona, UCLA, Wash St
X USC (4-6; BYU W/L, @California W/L)
X California (4-6; @UCLA W/L, USC W/L)

SEC (11-13 teams):
- Georgia, Kentucky, Alabama, Ole Miss, Miss-St, Texas A&M, Auburn, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina
~ Florida (5-6; Florida St W/L [-2.5])
~ LSU (5-6; Texas A&M L [+6.5])

SUN BELT (4-5 teams):
- App State, Coastal Carolina, Louisiana, GA State
~ Troy (5-6; @GA-St W/L [+6.5])
X South Alabama (5-6; Coastal Carolina L [+15])

... SO FAR: 71 - 75* teams [FOR 82 TOTAL SPOTS]
(*It'd be 76, but both FL & FL-St at 5-6 play, so the max level for either ACC or SEC has to be lowered by 1)


MAC (7-8 teams):
- NIU, CMU, WMU, EMU, Miami, Kent-St, Toledo
~ Ball State (5-6; Buffalo W/L [-6.5])

------------------------------

The # of Bowl Eligible Teams Realistically Will Range From 80 - 84 teams. Likely about 82.

# of SLOTS ALREADY LOCKED IN TO BE FILLED: 76 out of 82

OUTSIDE MAC GAMES TO WATCH AFFECTING BOWL ELIGIBILITY WITH 6 MORE TO FILL UP:

EXPECT TO WIN
- Memphis (5-6; Tulane W [-6])
- West Virginia (5-6; @Kansas W [-15.5])

COULD BE EITHER WAY
~ BALL STATE (5-6; Buffalo W/L [-6.5])
~ VaTech (5-6; @Virginia W/L [+7])
~ Troy (5-6; @GA-St W/L [+6.5])
~ LSU (5-6; Texas A&M L [+6.5])

DON'T COUNT ON IT
X Tulsa (5-6; @SMU L [+6.5])
X San Jose State (5-6; Fresno St L [+7.5])
X Syracuse (5-6; Pitt L [+13])
X TCU (5-6; @Iowa State L [+15])
X California (4-6; @UCLA W/L [+7], USC W/L *Xtra Game*)
X USC (4-6; BYU W/L [+7], @California W/L *Xtra Game*)
X South Alabama (5-6; Coastal Carolina L [+15])
X North Texas vs UTSA

IMO the Winners:
Memphis = 77
West VA = 78
BSU = 79
VaTech/Troy/LSU = 80
Cal/USC = 81
Tulsa/SJSU/Cuse/TCU/S-Alabama = 82

Ball State won on Wednesday,

(11-25-2021 08:33 PM)toddjnsn Wrote:  MAC BOWLS - 2021 (6 + 3 potentials):
- Bahamas Bowl
- Lending Tree Bowl
- Idaho Potato Bowl
- Cameillia Bowl
- Detroit Bowl
- Arizona Bowl
* Myrtle Beach Bowl (AAC/MAC/Sun Belt)
* Frisco Bowl (Any G5 vs Any G5)
* Cure Bowl (Any G5 vs Any G5 or Army)

got 2 of the more unlikely 5-6 teams to win going today-
South Alabama hosting Coastal Carolina
TCU on the road vs Iowa St

Two more teams (South Alabama and TCU) will know their fate by this evening. Both are 15 point underdogs.

In the SEC, 11 schools are bowl eligible with 2 others having a shot. Only Vanderbilt has been totally out.

If this doesn't say there are too many bowls if all, or near all, of these bowl eligible schools get placed for the post-season, what else does beyond low-attendance and dismal TV ratings?

(11-24-2021 01:34 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  [quote='AuzGrams' pid='17886531' dateline='1637742915']
Do people like watching 5-7 teams in bowl ³games? 6-6 is already mediocre as is but at least it’s .500

They ought to cut the Fenway & Yankee Bowls. Those stadiums get used plenty, it’s cold, & personally the sight lines are weird for football from what I see.

I like having the option to watch as much football as possible.

As long as there's a market for medicore/bad bowls, then who are we to intercede on that market? If ESPN didn't find them to have value, then they would get rid of them and we wouldn't be having this discussion... but they clearly see that they have value and in fact has bought a bunch of them outright. Even the worst bowl games have ratings that are on par with or better than all but a handful of regular season college basketball games.
Frankly, I go the opposite direction and would rather just allow everyone to have a 13th game regardless of record at this point.

At least, if this ever happens, do comprehensive bowl placements, for struggling programs by similar records and ratings at convenient locations.

I can see it now, Duke vs Vanderbilt in a new Choo Choo Bowl in Chattanooga.

(11-26-2021 10:04 AM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  In the SEC, 11 schools are bowl eligible with 2 others having a shot. Only Vanderbilt has been totally out.

If this doesn't say there are too many bowls if all, or near all, of these bowl eligible schools get placed for the post-season, what else does beyond low-attendance and dismal TV ratings?

The attendance may not be good, but the most important thing that *everyone* whining about how there are "too many bowls" NEEDS to internalize is that bowls do NOT get dismal TV ratings.

It takes a super elite college basketball matchup (e.g. some combo of Duke/Kentucky/Kansas/UNC/Michigan State) in order to generate the ratings of a pedestrian bowl game. A pedestrian bowl game will completely wallop any college basketball game lower than that elite level in the ratings.

So, you have to look at it through the lens of a TV executive. Remember that it's not as if though ESPN is able to show a bunch of NFL games during these holiday time slots. The NBA saves its best matchups for Christmas Day itself and any other type of programming (e.g. college basketball or the NHL) is filler by comparison. As a result, the best ratings that ESPN is able to garner during those time slots *is* college football (even "bad" college football), which is why they're not only more than happy to show these bowl games... but they actually *own* a critical mass of these bowl games.

That's why we're not seeing the number of bowl games being reduced. Even "bad" college football is the most reliable ratings generator in American sports outside of the NFL.

(11-26-2021 10:46 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-26-2021 10:04 AM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  In the SEC, 11 schools are bowl eligible with 2 others having a shot. Only Vanderbilt has been totally out.

If this doesn't say there are too many bowls if all, or near all, of these bowl eligible schools get placed for the post-season, what else does beyond low-attendance and dismal TV ratings?

The attendance may not be good, but the most important thing that *everyone* whining about how there are "too many bowls" NEEDS to internalize is that bowls do NOT get dismal TV ratings.

It takes a super elite college basketball matchup (e.g. some combo of Duke/Kentucky/Kansas/UNC/Michigan State) in order to generate the ratings of a pedestrian bowl game. A pedestrian bowl game will completely wallop any college basketball game lower than that elite level in the ratings.

So, you have to look at it through the lens of a TV executive. Remember that it's not as if though ESPN is able to show a bunch of NFL games during these holiday time slots. The NBA saves its best matchups for Christmas Day itself and any other type of programming (e.g. college basketball or the NHL) is filler by comparison. As a result, the best ratings that ESPN is able to garner during those time slots *is* college football (even "bad" college football), which is why they're not only more than happy to show these bowl games... but they actually *own* a critical mass of these bowl games.

That's why we're not seeing the number of bowl games being reduced. Even "bad" college football is the most reliable ratings generator in American sports outside of the NFL.

Yes, it's pretty simple - ESPN isn't in the business of disappointing its advertisers. If all these bowl games were ratings dead weight, they'd drop the bowl games and show the National Cornhole Association finals instead (I think they do show that too, LOL). But they don't.

The thing people who think these bowl games have sucky ratings fail to realize is that the choice isn't between airing the Cherabundi Cherry Bowl and say the "Who Shot JR?" episode of Dallas or the final episode of MASH. It's typically between that and a random college hoops game or a women's hoops game or professional motorcycle racing. And the bowl game draws more interest.

(11-26-2021 10:04 AM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  In the SEC, 11 schools are bowl eligible with 2 others having a shot. Only Vanderbilt has been totally out.

If this doesn't say there are too many bowls if all, or near all, of these bowl eligible schools get placed for the post-season, what else does beyond low-attendance and dismal TV ratings?

Even if UF and LSU do become bowl eligible, I will be very surprised if any of the 13 SEC teams are not placed in a bowl game. Even if there are more bowl eligible SEC teams than tie-ins (not a sure thing, btw, if both Alabama and Georgia make the playoffs, the SEC has 11 tie-ins for those 11 other teams) and even if there are 82 or more bowl-eligible teams nationally, meaning all bowl slots are filled, a place will be found for them.

Some random 7-5 or 6-6 MAC or independent will be booted from a gig in the Bahamas Bowl or something to make room for them.

My theory with the popularity of college football bowl games and college football in general (and I could be way off) is simple:

Ask a college sports fan her/his favorite sport. If the answer is any sport other than football, ask for the second-favorite college sport. It will often (if not almost always) be football. For example, I've rarely met a person whose favorite college sport is baseball or basketball and whose second favorite college sport is not football. Try this experiment.

Conversely, if the person's favorite college sport is football, that person's second-favorite college sport could be any number of options. My father, for example, lists his favorite college sport as football. When I ask him his second-favorite, he struggles to choose between men's basketball, baseball and women's softball (he likes his Oklahoma Lady Sooners on the diamond).

And if I'm correct with this theory, that might be the key differentiating characteristic of college football related to all other college sports. And why seemingly ho-hum bowl games might be more popular than some of us realize.

I don't know that I'm ready to let everybody play in a bowl game just so they all get a 13th game. But I would like to see the rules changed to allow teams that don't go to a bowl to get the same additional practice time that bowl teams get. Clearly, they need it.

In fact, I wonder if some marginal teams might opt not to play their meaningless bowl (which probably costs them more money to play than not play) if they could just practice with returning players for a couple more weeks instead.

(11-26-2021 11:26 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  My theory with the popularity of college football bowl games and college football in general (and I could be way off) is simple:

Ask a college sports fan her/his favorite sport. If the answer is any sport other than football, ask for the second-favorite college sport. It will often (if not almost always) be football. For example, I've rarely met a person whose favorite college sport is baseball or basketball and whose second favorite college sport is not football. Try this experiment.

Conversely, if the person's favorite college sport is football, that person's second-favorite college sport could be any number of options. My father, for example, lists his favorite college sport as football. When I ask him his second-favorite, he struggles to choose between men's basketball, baseball and women's softball (he likes his Oklahoma Lady Sooners on the diamond).

And if I'm correct with this theory, that might be the key differentiating characteristic of college football related to all other college sports. And why seemingly ho-hum bowl games might be more popular than some of us realize.

I honestly don’t think college football fans are that unique when it comes to secondary/tertiary sports. I’m sure that you’ll get some esoteric answers from individuals like women’s softball, but it’s pretty clear that Americans watch football (both pro and college), basketball (both pro and college) and pro baseball predominantly and everything else is much more random.

There have actually been a lot of studies that the universal factor that holds everything together is the NFL. The NFL is the most popular sport in America by far, and even where people say that something else is their favorite sport (whether college football or basketball, NBA, MLB or NHL), the NFL is named their next favorite sport by a wide margin. That certainly bears out in the TV ratings - your standard late Sunday afternoon game on Fox or CBS is going to have higher ratings than even the College Football Playoff.

Also, you have to look at intensity of fandom for any individual. For instance, if I were to rank my favorite sports, I’d say: (1) college football, (2) NFL, (3) college basketball, (4) NBA, (5) MLB, (6) NHL, (7) golf and (8) tennis However, I’m also a very high volume sports viewer compared to the general public where (much to my wife’s chagrin) I watch more NBA, MLB and NHL games than probably 99% of the population. My wife would probably rank the NBA and NFL as her top 2 sports, yet I watch waaaaay more of both compared to her.

The only area where college football fans might have unique crossover is that they’re over represented in the South, which means that other sports have a disproportionate number of Southern viewers (such as NASCAR) will have a disproportionately higher number of crossover fans. It’s still all relative, though, because it’s clear that the NFL is the #1 crossover sport for every other American sport by far.

(11-26-2021 09:44 AM)ken d Wrote:  Two more teams (South Alabama and TCU) will know their fate by this evening. Both are 15 point underdogs.

SE Texas win gets them to 5-7 and makes them leaders in the clubhouse for APR berth (up to 5 available):

SE Texas T43
San Jose State T109

If South Alabama and TCU lose, they will APR eligible at T103 and T92 respectively.

(11-26-2021 03:33 PM)jimrtex Wrote:  

(11-26-2021 09:44 AM)ken d Wrote:  Two more teams (South Alabama and TCU) will know their fate by this evening. Both are 15 point underdogs.

SE Texas win gets them to 5-7 and makes them leaders in the clubhouse for APR berth (up to 5 available):

SE Texas T43
San Jose State T109

If South Alabama and TCU lose, they will APR eligible at T103 and T92 respectively.

Who or what is SE Texas?

South Alabama not going down without a fight. Trail by 1 with 11 minutes to go.

South Alabama falls in OT.

TCU down 41-14 late so they'll be out.

got 10 teams left after the 4 5-6 teams and 2 of those teams need 2 wins. The other 8 teams need to go 5-3 to be set. Not looking good at all now.

73 out of 82 already filled by Already 6-6 Teams
77 out of 82 already Taken, due to 5-6 vs 5-6 matchups:
(1) Florida State vs Florida
(2) Maryland vs Rutgers
(3) Charlotte vs Old Dominion
(4) MTSU vs Florida Atlantic

GAMES TO WATCH AFFECTING BOWL ELIGIBILITY WITH 5 MORE TO FILL UP:

EXPECT TO WIN
- Memphis (5-6; Tulane W [-6])
- West Virginia (5-6; @Kansas W [-15.5])

COULD BE EITHER WAY
~ VaTech (5-6; @Virginia W/L [+7])
~ Troy (5-6; @GA-St W/L [+6.5])
~ LSU (5-6; Texas A&M L [+6.5])

DON'T COUNT ON IT
X Tulsa (5-6; @SMU L [+6.5])
X Syracuse (5-6; Pitt L [+13])
X California (4-6; @UCLA W/L [+7], USC W/L *Xtra Game*)
X USC (4-6; BYU W/L [+7], @California W/L *Xtra Game*)
X North Texas (5-6; @UTSA [+10])

IMO the Winners:
Memphis = 78
West VA = 79
VaTech/Troy/LSU = 80
Cal/USC = 81

... could be that, could be filled tho.