Bowl and APR Situation

[TreeFiddy]

Without a doubt, if I am a player, I am hoping for Bahamas or Hawaii.

[Mean Green Matt]

Miami Ohio gets to 6. 

Akron loses its 7th. 

[JesseMartin]

3 hours ago, Cerebus said:

OK let's play a mental exercise.  

• Assume NT and UTSA win this weekend, while USM loses to LaTech.
• Assume LaTech beats WKU in the CUSA champ game.
• CUSA Bowls are:  Boca Raton, Hawaii, New Mexico, Bahamas, New Orleans, HoD.  
• LaTech picks first.
• WKU picks seconds.
• ODU and MTSU pick next, but ODU will probably have one more win.
• North Texas and UTSA pick next, I am not 100% sure head to head plays into selection order.

Then I imagine the picks are:

• LaTech takes HoD.   Only bowl with a shot of a P5 opponent,  plenty of alumni in the area.
• WKU takes Boca, they want to recruit Florida heavily.
• ODU take New Orleans since it is a good destination their fans can travel to, they won't have a historical hangup against playing an SBC school like many CUSA schools will.
• MTSU takes the Hawaii bowl since it will give Stockstill the most time to heal before the game.
• That leaves UTSA and North Texas for New Mexico and Bahamas.
• I am not sure UTSA's head to head win against us will come into play, but I am going to assume it does.
• UTSA takes New Mexico so their fanbase can travel easily.
• North Texas takes Bahamas Bowl.

Thoughts?

 

In any situation where the conference has some pull, at the very least in convincing the schools, I would think that the combination best suiting a favorable net outcome would come into play. So when it comes to those of us at the low end of the bowl ranking order, you obviously want to keep teams as close to their region as possible for travel costs. However, if they don't have to defer to things like head-to-head or can convince the schools otherwise, with UTSA being fairly new and still growing their fanbase (though they showed up quite nicely in SA), I would expect UNT to travel better in the region, so I could see us getting the New Mexico Bowl (which I was hoping for all along anyway) and UTSA going to the Bahamas. More on that below....

9 minutes ago, TreeFiddy said:

Without a doubt, if I am a player, I am hoping for Bahamas or Hawaii.

That has come up before...I think they even had a couple of minutes discussing it on BTG. Players want to be in front of as many fans and friends as possible. If that's not an issue, then they would definitely go for a tropical option if the fan numbers are the same. That's why it makes sense for UTSA in the Bahamas if they hit 6 wins. They have a small and dedicated base for their growing program. It will be bigger in the future, but they aren't likely to travel many more to NM than to the Bahamas.

We don't travel very well either, but do have a larger base in general, including nationally, and have slightly stronger name recognition from our previous periods of success, even though they have been rare in recent memory. I think the difference in potential ticket sales gives us Albuquerque if all else is equal. And I sure hope so!

[Cerebus]

On 11/22/2016 at 9:17 PM, JesseMartin said:

That's why it makes sense for UTSA in the Bahamas if they hit 6 wins. They have a small and dedicated base for their growing program. It will be bigger in the future, but they aren't likely to travel many more to NM than to the Bahamas.

They have outdrawn us in home attendance every year.

 

• With Eastern Michigan's win, there are now 65 bowl eligible teams.
• NCST is beating NC 14-0 early.  If they hold on they becme the 66th bowl eligible team.
• TCU @ Texas wil be on FS1 at 2:30, UT would become bowl eligible with a win.
• USM hosts LaTech at 3:00 on ESPNNews. USM has to win to become bowl eligible.

[JesseMartin]

38 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

They have outdrawn us in home attendance every year.

 

• With Eastern Michigan's win, there are now 65 bowl eligible teams.
• NCST is beating NC 14-0 early.  If they hold on they becme the 66th bowl eligible team.
• TCU @ Texas wil be on FS1 at 2:30, UT would become bowl eligible with a win.
• USM hosts LaTech at 3:00 on ESPNNews. USM has to win to become bowl eligible.

Note that I pointed out earlier that they showed up well at home...I'm talking about traveling fans...but I don't have the stats. When I've seen them on televised games it looks like they don't bring many. Their home attendance isn't much of an indicator of how many will actually travel for a bowl.

[Cerebus]

1 minute ago, JesseMartin said:

 When I've seen them on televised games it looks like they don't bring many. 

How many of our away games have you travelled to?  We never travel well outside the state.  

What makes you think we'll travel to ABQ better than they will?  We travelled well to New Orleans, as almost any Texas school will.  Then we "travelled" well to Dallas, and area we have a couple hundred thousand alumni in.  

Let's see what our away crowd at UTEP looks like.  

[JesseMartin]

I don't think we'll travel well to UTEP, even with a bowl game on the line, on Thanksgiving weekend. Albuquerque isn't terribly far to drive, and fares on Southwest may be decent, so for a bowl game, yes, I think we will travel better with an 8 hour drive than they would with a 13 hour drive, as well as with more alumni in the region. Both schools' alumni bases are heavily concentrated in their respective metro areas, but we do have more overall throughout the southwest. I would bet we bring at least 5000 more than them, likely more than that.

[Cerebus]

NCST becomes 66th bowl eligible team.  

[Cerebus]

LATech @ USMis now live on ESPNews.  

 

Nick Mullens is playing so this might be a good close game.  

[Andrew]

Southern Miss looking pretty good so far. Lots of penalty flags already so you can tell it's a CUSA game...

Lets go La Tech!

[Cerebus]

USM winning 23-17, start of the 3rd.

[Cerebus]

USM up 29-17 going into the 4th.  Thank goodness we didn't face Nick Mullens.  

I didn't see this coming, or the NCST win.  

 

If USM holds on, and UTSA wins tomorrow (they should) then CUSA will have 7 teams for 6 bowl slots.  I still think we win tomorrow, but even them we might end up someplace like Idaho.  *sad trombone*

[Mean Green Matt]

54 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

USM up 29-17 going into the 4th.  Thank goodness we didn't face Nick Mullens.  

I didn't see this coming, or the NCST win.  

 

If USM holds on, and UTSA wins tomorrow (they should) then CUSA will have 7 teams for 6 bowl slots.  I still think we win tomorrow, but even them we might end up someplace like Idaho.  *sad trombone*

Give me Boise over Hawaii or Bahamas any day. That trip could actually be made at a reasonable cost. With NT and USM both finishing 4-4 and us having the tiebreaker does that mean we are stuck with a CUSA bowl (Bahamas or Hawaii) no matter what if we win tomorrow?

[Cerebus]

Missed a game earlier. 

• Arizona St (5-6) plays at Arizona (2-9), game will be on ESPN at 8:30.

 

Where we stand:

• There are now 68 bowl eligible teams.
• There are 12 teams one win away from bowl eligibility. 
• However many of the above 12 teams lose, that is how many APR slots there are.

The 12 teams are:

• SMU 
• Boston College 
• Indiana vs Purdue
• Maryland 
• Northwestern
• North Texas
• UTSA
• Army
• Hawaii 
• Arizona State
• Ole Miss
• Vanderbilt

The bolded teams are above us in APR and will take a bowl slot even if they lose, so in effect there are now 9 open APR slots, that will close as each non APR wins.

In addition, if Duke wins tomorrow, they will also take an APR slot before us, leaving 8.  

Worse case scenario is Duke wins, and ALL of the 8 the non bolded teams win.  That is the only scenario that would leave us out.  

ETA: If Arizona State loses tonight we'll be in a bowl game.

 

Stop the presses.  @shaft reminded me that ULL has only played 10 games and can still get to 6.   We need two out of BC, Indiana, Maryland, UTSA, Hawaii, Arizona St, Ole Miss and ULL to lose.  

[Moobs]

Thanks for putting all these scenarios together.  It's really helpful.

[Cerebus]

2 minutes ago, TreeFiddy said:

Should South Alabama be on the list?  They are 5-5 with 2 games left.

Son of a gun yes.  I had them earlier and dropped them off for some reason.  

I'll update this tomorrow.  I am going to double check the standings and make sure there are no other sneaky "we've only played ten games" teams.

[TreeFiddy]

1 minute ago, Cerebus said:

Son of a gun yes.  I had them earlier and dropped them off for some reason.  

I'll update this tomorrow.  I am going to double check the standings and make sure there are no other sneaky "we've only played ten games" teams.

I just checked.  I see that they have wins over Nicholls and Presbyterian.  I assume they cannot count both, so maybe they really just have 4 FBS wins, which means they would have to win their last 2 (Idaho and NM St).

[@UNTSportsFan]

25 minutes ago, TreeFiddy said:

I just checked.  I see that they have wins over Nicholls and Presbyterian.  I assume they cannot count both, so maybe they really just have 4 FBS wins, which means they would have to win their last 2 (Idaho and NM St).

I believe South Alabama  got a waiver for that since they were pretty much forced into the Presbyterian game.. they only need to get to 6 wins 

Edited November 26, 2016 by @UNTSportsFan

[TreeFiddy]

The more I look at this, the more I am getting worried if we don't win.  I think USM and NC State showed what teams are capable of when it is win or go home.  I hope we respond the same way.  

Beat UTEP.

[@UNTSportsFan]

Looks like we can scratch Arizona State off the list. Getting drove by rival Arizona 49-28 4Q 

[shaft]

We're getting close.  Beat UTEP and we're in, there is no longer any doomsday scernairo.

Unfilled Bowl Slots: 12

Bubble (5 win) Teams: 11

Watch List (Can still make a bowl) Teams: 2 (Duke, ULL)

APR Order: Duke, Northwestern, Vandy, Army, UNT

 

 

 

[@UNTSportsFan]

Southern Miss most likely headed to New Orleans 

[Cerebus]

 

[Cerebus]

Go ahead and count NW a bowl eligible.  Up 21 with 6 minutes left.  

[@UNTSportsFan]

19 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Go ahead and count NW a bowl eligible.  Up 21 with 6 minutes left.  

Indiana has defeated Purdue