Bowl eligibility just means you've cleared security, had all your bodily cavities thoroughly probed for potential explosives, fingernail clippers and whatever else airport security cares about for some reason. This doesn't mean you're necessarily getting on the plane, you just have a ticket and made it passed security. You are not yet on the plane. The teams that are eligible for a bowl have not yet boarded.
Just like a plane, there are only so many seats, some teams could get left out, the bastard airline could overbook. This would be the case if there were more bowl-eligible teams than bowl game slots. These teams potentially left stranded at the airport are the ones I plan to pick from for what I have pretty definitively decided to call my "Invisi-bowl" a bowl game that does not exist, but we're going to pretend it does.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, we look at the teams that have made it through security, these teams have just been handed their ticket since our last blog:
Illinois
Miami (FL)
Miami (OH)
Nevada
Southern Mississippi
Temple
Texas
USC
Virginia Tech
Western Kentucky
Washington
Twelve new teams, twelve more seats spoken for.
Here is the complete list of teams that are bowl eligible:
By my count 56 out 79 of seats spoken for.
The next group is on the bubble, one more loss and they're stuck in standby (more on that in a bit). They are rushing through traffic, trying to find parking, one too many red lights and they're watching their plane take off from the concourse.
Eleven teams managed to keep their bubble from popping:
Army
Middle Tennessee
Northern Illinois
Houston
Kent State
Syracuse
Mississippi
Purdue
Colorado
Texas State
Kansas
Purdue, in particular, kicked a field goal as time expired to avoid the dreaded standby group below. These poor teams are waiting and hoping that the plane doesn’t fill up. This has only happened once in my lifetime, so you take that percentage multiplied by the percentage of them winning all the rest of their games and you get a very small percentage but it’s more than zero so they aren’t out yet.
Tulsa, Rutgers, New Mexico, and UNLV survived stand-by for another week. Rutgers is staring down the barrel of 9-0 #1 Ohio State and one of the biggest point spreads I’ve ever seen….. 51.5 points.
Next is the sweet spot, I don’t have any cool airport-related metaphors for these teams, these are the ones we care about, the ones who can go either way.
We’ve talked about Missouri before but I heard last week there are appeals and waivers and crap now with Missouri and their bowl eligibility. I’m pretty sure they lost bowl eligibility this year no matter what but they are still waiting to hear from the NCAA about scholarship losses, seems a little late in the year for the NCAA to be dragging there feet. I dislike ‘Misery’ as much as the next guy but what the NCAA is doing to them is weak-sauce. Man the airport can be maddening sometimes.
Staying close to home look for Nebraska’s bowl chances would skyrocket with an upset over Wisconsin.
New additions to those who are grounded, stuck at the airport: UConn, Northwestern, UTEP, Arkansas
South Alabama.
Last week I added the teams that still had a chance to go undefeated. Not a lot of interesting change there in my book, but what everyone is trying to talk about, or at least trying to get your attention is that Minnesota is only ranked 8th but are undefeated. For reference though Ohio State is first with an 85% to go undefeated, the Gophers? Just over 2%. Let’s wait to see if the Gophers can get past Iowa this weekend a game in which they are three-point underdogs. But that doesn’t generate clicks and fill ESPN talk shows with talking points.
That’s it for this week, I’m writing this close to midnight Friday, next week I hope to have this done with more time to spare before boarding.
The airport metaphor really helps! Thanks babe!
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