Bowl season is right around the corner and if you’ve read my content before, you know it’s one of my favorite times of the year. If there’s snow on the ground and college football on TV and you get on the internet to complain about the Bahamas Bowl, I don’t like you. Anyways lets get down to it.
Iowa State’s chances at qualifying are ‘good’ going in
With three weeks remaining in the college football regular season, 52 teams have clinched bowl eligibility by reaching the six-win mark. With 41 bowl games on the slate this year, 82 spots are up for grabs in total.
That means 30 spots remain for teams to claim before the end of the season.
I’ll get to the full breakdown below, but for Iowa State fans, I’ll explain why I feel confident the Cyclones will be going bowling for the sixth year in a row.
Iowa State has two very winnable games remaining on the schedule in Oklahoma State and Texas Tech, but they may only need to win one of them to clinch a spot.
In my breakdown, I’ve examined the schedules for the remaining weeks and it’s more likely than not that at least two 5-7 teams will qualify for bowl games.
Iowa State is rated in a tie at No. 17 overall in the nation’s APR rate (APR stands for Athletic Progress Rate and is used to determine which 5-7 teams are first eligible to claim one of the extra spots). Boston College, which is 2-7 after nine games, is the team tied with them, but obviously could be eliminated after this week.
Of the programs who haven’t yet secured either a postseason spot or have been eliminated, the Cyclones are the fourth-highest rated team. Teams above Iowa State include Rice, Wisconsin and Temple.
I have Wisconsin slated as likely to get to 6 wins, Rice as a maybe, and Temple as a ‘probably not.’ If you want to scoreboard watch this, just cheer against teams called the Owls.
With this information, I’d say Iowa State at 5-7 will be celebrating the 18 days of ‘Bowlmas.’
The breakdown for Week 11
As for the full breakdown, I’ve included every program that hasn’t suffered eight losses yet as contenders for the final spots. Obviously some are longshots and may not have a high enough APR to even qualify, but I’ll dive in deeper on this as the end of the season gets closer.
I’ve separated the remaining 71 teams into their chances of getting to the 6-win mark.
The ‘most likely’ column includes 17 teams that I think will surely be reaching six wins. Those are programs like BYU, which plays Utah Tech next week and will earn its sixth win. Purdue and SMU each have a 1-8 team to play on their schedules. Stuff like that.
The middle column is sort of where the bubble is. Will it burst or not? Can UConn beat Army (they wont be Liberty)? Is Rice going to find a win between WKU, UTSA or North Texas? Can UNLV find two wins in their last three and take down both Hawaii and Nevada?
There’s 21 teams in the middle, and there’s equal chances any of those could go to the green or the red.
We’ll know more after this weekend, but the full breakdown can be seen below.
