With 56 bowl berths available to Division I-A schools, it seems there would be a great amount of flexibility in getting the right teams in the right bowls.
But every non-BCS bowl berth has a conference tie-in - a guaranteed spot for a team from one conference - limiting to a degree the teams that bowl officials can invite. In years past, several at-large bids were available.
Bids were coming in early November
when teams still had three or four games to play Ohio Director of Athletics Thomas Boeh said. I think it'd be nice to be able to have a little flexibility to the bowl season but the bowls are a loosely associated group. They don't even cooperate with each other to a degree; they treat inviting teams as a free-for-all
and the invitations are coming earlier and earlier every year. That wasn't good for the sport
the fans or the student-athletes.
Boeh said the GMAC and Motor City Bowls - the two bowls with Mid-American Conference tie-ins - have worked together well to ensure MAC teams get the proper bowl fit. He said this year, it made sense for Bowling Green to play in the Motor City Bowl because of the proximity of the Bowling Green campus to the Detroit-based bowl.
Similarly, he said Miami was the best fit for the GMAC Bowl because it provided a chance for a match-up between two of the most glamorous non-BCS schools in the country - the RedHawks and Texas Christian University.
I think it would be great to have that kind of flexibility across the board for bowl season
but it's very difficult with all the money and with the loosely formed association to create equitable access for everybody
he said.
Another side effect of conference tie-ins is that certain conferences are shut out of bowl bids if they have a particularly successful season, as the MAC did this year.
The conference was one of only three -along with the Southeastern Conference and Big 12 - to have three 10-win teams at the end of the regular season. The MAC had three teams listed in the final top 30 polls, but perhaps the most telling statistic was that the conference had five wins against nationally ranked opponents. In the previous 56 seasons, the conference only had a combined nine wins against ranked foes.
Conference USA, on the other hand, had no wins against opponents that were nationally ranked when the games were played, and it only had one 10-win team. But the conference has five bowl tie-ins compared to the MAC's two. Coincidentally, Marshall and the University of Central Florida are jumping from the MAC to C-USA.
But Boeh said the situation doesn't concern him, mainly because he sees no way it will continue.
I think Conference USA is losing two of its best football schools (Louisville and Cincinnati to the Big East Conference) traditionally
and there's a Conference USA school (TCU) contemplating leaving
he said.
My crystal ball is no better than anyone else's
but based on their membership and the teams they have leaving
I think it'd be very difficult for them to maintain the number of tie-ins they have right now.
