Bowl Game Tracker: The Final Major Weekend.

The final week of the regular season is here. The Army/Navy game still looms as does a host of conference championships but for Bowl purposes, this is it for most teams. 

First, let's take a moment to tip our cap to the teams that made their way to bowl eligibility this week: 

Arizona State, Cal, Charlotte, FIU, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Washington State. All teams are sitting at 6-5. 

This makes our complete list of bowl-eligible teams:

	Team	W	L
1	Air Force	9	2
2	Alabama	10	1
3	Appalachian State	10	1
4	Arizona State	6	5
5	Arkansas State	7	4
6	Auburn	8	3
7	Baylor	10	1
8	Boise State	10	1
9	Buffalo	6	5
10	BYU	7	4
11	Cal	6	5
12	Central FL	8	3
13	Central Michigan	7	4
14	Charlotte	6	5
15	Cincinnati	10	1
16	Clemson	11	0
17	Eastern Michigan	6	5
18	FAU	8	3
19	Florida	9	2
20	FIU	6	5
21	Florida State	6	5
22	Georgia Southern	6	5
23	Georgia	10	1
24	Georgia State	7	4
25	Hawaii	8	4
26	Illinois	6	5
27	Indiana	7	4
28	Iowa	8	3
29	Iowa State	7	4
30	Kansas St	7	4
31	Kentucky	6	5
32	Louisiana Lafayette	9	2
33	Louisiana Tech	8	3
34	Louisville	7	4
35	LSU	11	0
36	Marshall	7	4
37	Memphis	10	1
38	Miami (FL)	6	5
39	Miami (OH)	7	4
40	Michigan	9	2
41	Minnesota	10	1
42	Navy	8	2
43	Nevada	7	4
44	Notre Dame	9	2
45	Ohio State	11	0
46	Oklahoma	10	1
47	Oklahoma State	8	3
48	Oregon	9	2
49	Penn State	9	2
50	Pitt	7	4
51	SMU	9	2
52	Southern Mississippi	7	4
53	San Diego State	8	3
54	Temple	7	4
55	Tennessee	6	5
56	Texas	6	5
57	Texas A&M	7	4
58	Toledo	6	5
59	Tulane	6	5
60	UAB	8	3
61	USC	8	4
62	Utah	10	1
63	Utah State	6	5
64	Virginia Tech	8	3
65	Virginia	8	3
66	Western Kentucky	7	4
67	Western Michigan	7	4
68	Wake Forest	8	3
69	Washington State	6	5
70	Washington	6	5
71	Wisconsin	9	2
72	Wyoming	7	4

I count 72 teams with 78 spots available, leaving 6 for sure spots, for most of my blogs leading up to this one I thought we were in good shape for my “InvisiBowl” but according to this article, six spots with basically one week left is “the biggest shortfall going into the final week of the season in at least four years.” 

The article once you get past a few snide, looking down their nose at the number of bowl games comments everyone but myself seems to make this time of year. Think there are too many bowls? Don’t watch them. Once we look at teams that are mostly one game out we can see why. This week we’ll do the teams that are one win out a little differently since there are so few I’ll include their last opponent to give an idea of what each team is up against:

	Team	W	L	Bowl Eligible %	Last Opponent
1	Liberty	6	5	100	New Mexico State (2-9)
2	Ohio*	5	6	96.4	at Akron (0-11)
3	Michigan State	5	6	89.6	Maryland (3-8)
4	TCU	5	6	89.1	West Virginia (4-7)
5	North Carolina	5	6	72.2	at NC State (4-7)
6	Mississippi State	5	6	71.5	Mississippi (4-7)
7	Army	5	6	61.4	at Hawaii (8-4)	Navy (8-2)
8	BC	5	6	34.3	at Pitt (7-4)
9	Nebraska	5	6	33.7	Iowa (8-3)
10	Kent State	5	6	32.4	Eastern Michigan (6-5)
11	Troy	5	6	18.6	App State (10-1)
12	Oregon State	5	6	3.9	at Oregon (9-2)
13	Louisiana Monroe	5	6	3.2	at Louisiana Lafayette (9-2)
14	Colorado	5	6	2.6	at Utah (10-1)

Now we see the crux that the bowl games are in. After the first four teams, the percentages drop off sharply, by the time you get to the bottom you have three teams under 4%. I really don’t see App State falling to Troy either so now we’re down to ten. This makes the middle games extremely interesting and darn close to a coin flip (50%). Another interesting scenario is to keep an eye on, Army. Army plays a 13th game which from my understanding means they have to win both games to get bowl eligible. That means that if Army beats Hawaii they are still in play for a bowl game even though Army and Navy play the VERY LAST regular-season game as is the tradition. This last game comes one week after the conference championship games, meaning the dust may not settle on bowl games until the 14th of December. Returning to the list above now that most teams have only one game left this provides insight into how projections for a single game are put together by the teamrankings site. For example, the spread of the Nebraska/Iowa game has been all over the map from as low as 3.5 all the way to 6.5 always in favor of Iowa, but how does that equate to a percent chance of Nebraska or Iowa winning? Nebraska is given a 32.4% chance to beat Iowa but a 33.7 chance to get to a bowl game. Because Iowa is Nebraska’s last game you would expect those percents to be the same, is teamrankings considering the possibility of Nebraska losing and getting in as a stand-by team in their bowl calculation? Whatever the case there appears to be some special sauce going into their numbers that I don’t know about. I’m splitting hairs here but if Nebraska is given a 32.4% chance to win what would you then expect Iowa’s percent chance to win be? 100 - 32.4 right? So 67.6 %? Nope, Iowa is given a 67.4% chance to win. Because this difference is two-tenths of a percent off said difference couldn’t be chalked up to rounding, nor the possibility of a tie as college football games cannot end in a tie. My guess is that each team’s percent chance to win is calculated individually. Now I feel bad though because I just spent a huge paragraph griping over two-tenths of a percent. Sorry. Perhaps it’s important to remind myself and the reader that the true purpose of the site I’m getting my number’s from is to aid in gambling. In effect, I’m to use a computer programming terminology I’m overloading teamrankings method. They’re site’s purpose is to aid in gambling, I’m using it for something other than it’s intended purpose, tracking bowl-eligible teams. Wow, I am WAY off track. Now that I am aware of the potential shortfall of bowl-eligible teams our stand-by teams are all the more important:

East	W	L
Arizona	4	7
Ball State	4	7
Coastal Carolina	4	7
Colorado State	4	7
Duke	4	7
East Carolina	4	7
Fresno State	4	7
Houston	4	7
Middle Tennessee	4	7
Mississippi	4	7
NC State	4	7
North Texas	4	7
Northern Illinois	4	7
Purdue	4	7
San Jose State	4	7
South Carolina	4	7
Stanford	4	7
Syracuse	4	7
Texas Tech	4	7
UCLA	4	7
USF	4	7
UTSA	4	7
West Virginia	4	7

I count 23 teams, that number should remain about the same after the seasons final week. If that’s the case whatever weird method is needed to determine which of the 5-7 teams from the standby group fill those last few bowl slots if indeed there is a shortfall. If I read this article correctly then the Pac-12 teams aren’t allowed to go bowling at 507 so UCLA and Arizona up above can effectively be scratched off. I will close with a conundrum I found myself in the night Ohio played this week. All year I have been rooting for teams to become bowl eligible, the more teams that do the more likely my InvisBowl can take place, but there is the very real possibility 67ish % chance in fact that Nebraska could lose their final game and be in the standby group and still have a shot at a bowl game. If those events were to transpire I should root for fewer teams to become bowl eligible. Ultimately I opted to switch to rooting against team’s becoming bowl eligible. I did this for the following reasons: For the benefit to my personal favorite team The people who gripe about the number and quality of bowl games, seeing 5-7 teams in bowl games really make their blood boil, I’m all about that. So for you the reader, who and how you choose comes down to how your team is doing, whether you prefer order (enough bowl-eligible teams to fill all the spots) or chaos (not enough teams qualifying resulting in everyone googling the criteria for selecting which 5-7 teams get bowl games.) Whichever side you choose you may find yourself like me on Thanksgiving, actually caring about The Egg Bowl. The rivalry game between Mississippi and Mississippi State. If you are like me you don’t think or care a lot about what happens in Mississippi but a win by the Bulldogs would mean bowl eligibility and one more spot is taken. Enjoy your turkey, enjoy your family, enjoy what is sure to be a crazy end to the college football regular season and thank you so much for reading. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *=Ohio has become bowl eligible since I started writing this week’s blog. Way to go Fightin’ Frankie’s.