(02-03-2018 09:29 AM)Volkmar Wrote:  Not-So-Fun Fact: We qualified for a bowl in 2016 as a .500 team (6-6). But in our three winning seasons of FBS football so far (8-4 in the WAC in 2012, 7-5 in C-USA in 2013, and 6-5 last year), we didn't get into a bowl in either (lol), for different reasons of course.

This is why I always bristle a little at number of bowl seasons or bowl seasons in a row as a meaningful stat. Or when the story is "first bowl since XXXX" or whatever. I understand why it's used as shorthand and sometimes it just makes an interesting (and technically true) narrative, it's only fairly recently that a winning record all but assured a bowl bid (and as you've shown it's not 100% even now).

I could argue that the 3 of the 4 best Tech teams over the last 20 years didn't go to bowls for various reasons (well, really just because the purpose of the bowl system isn't to reward winning records or the best teams in a given season, but to make money).

It's weird.