 Let's Talk Bowls
The current bowl cycle runs through the 2025/26 Bowl Season. After that everything changes.
Where is Conference USA guaranteed to send a team in these last four years of the cycle?
New Orleans--2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025
Bahamas--2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Hawaii--2022, 2024
Independence--2025
Now, we know in 2023 nine teams are gone and four teams are coming in. That won't affect any of the bids Conference USA has in 2024 and 2025. As long as the league as the eligible teams, they will go to those bowls.
Plus, there are the ESPN Pool bowls. These bowls are where the 2023 realignment teams among the conferences would get shuffled where we can expect the AAC and Sun Belt to probably get an additional few teams in, but that's going to be based on bowl eligibility.
I'd be ecstatic if Conference USA had nine bowl eligible teams in 2023, but that's probably not practical because it would involve winning a lot of out-of-conference games. About 4-5 would be reasonable of which two would go to New Orleans and Bahamas, and the rest would go to ESPN pool bowls.
Let's talk about bowls CUSA will lose, keep, and gain at the start of the new cycle.
Keep
New Orleans:
It's highly unlikely this game will drop Conference USA as an affiliate. It's been around since 2001, and all but three contests have featured a team from Conference USA despite losing Louisville, Cincinnati, South Florida, Army, Memphis, Houston, Central Florida, SMU, Tulsa, and East Carolina to other affiliations in that span of time. Plus, New Orleans is still pretty good regionally for Louisiana Tech, Sam Houston, and Jacksonville State.
Bahamas:
This particular bowl relies heavily on the attendance from locals, and I think the Bahamas Bowl organizers know this, which is why Conference USA and the Mid-American Conference have been the only two conferences to go here.
Hawaii:
The Hawaii Bowl has had very few opportunities to pick up matchups that were once as lucrative when the Aloha Bowl was around. While Conference USA could very likely keep this bowl as a primary tie-in, it likely would be on a rotational basis as it is now. I see this bowl becoming a Mountain West annual vs the AAC or CUSA on rotation.
Lose
Independence:
To understand why Conference USA would be knocked out of even a rotational spot in this game, one need only look at the bowls history. From 1995-2019 this bowl saw an SEC team every year except when the bowl had the Mountain West take the spot in 2010-2011 against the ACC. The ACC was in the game from 2010-2019. After 2019 this is when the Independence Bowl started picking up Gang of 5 match-ups in the current bowl cycle that started in 2020. I think you'll see this bowl return to the Power 5's--namely the SEC and the Big XII. While the SEC has had the most affiliations to the Independence Bowl, the Big XII is 2nd on the list among FBS conferences. With both the SEC and Big XII seeing a net membership increase before the next bowl cycle begins, the Independence is very likely to make a pitch for primary affiliation to the new SEC and new Big XII.
Gain
New Mexico:
The addition of New Mexico State with UTEP makes the New Mexico Bowl a likely candidate to be a guaranteed primary tie-in even if it's on a rotation, which is also likely.
Frisco Bowl:
Another bowl that would likely promise CUSA a place on rotation could be the bowl in Frisco with the AAC being the likely opponent.
In the end, there's a bunch of bowls, and we will have nine teams barring some surprise unforseen expansion before then. We can reasonably expect that all of our ranks will head to a bowl as long as they are bowl eligible in most years given the enormity of the number of bowls. Regardless, we will have something to look forward to in the coming years.
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