Sun Belt Football Question

[El Paso Eagle]

Hopefully someone can help clarify this -

6 wins makes a school eligible for a Bowl - The Sun Belt will have at least 4 teams with 6 wins

2 teams will have at 8 wins - with a couple of upsets 4 teams could have 7 wins or more

Question - Do teams with 7 or more wins get preference over 6 win teams? Could a 7 or 8 win Sun Belt teams stay home while a 6 win team from a BCS conference gets selected?

Thanks

[stebo]

The answer is... it depends. Bowl games have their contracted conferences. Each bowl is allowed two primary and one back-up conference. Those conferences PAY to have those spots. So if the SEC has a tie in to a bowl game and they have 3 or 4 "6 win" teams, those teams can go over any Belt team because their conference has PAID for that spot. But if a bowl game only has a primary agreement (as most do)... and have to go at large... they HAVE to pick a 7 win or above team before they can select from a 6 win auto-bid conference. In the case of the Sun Belt, all three of our bowls that we have MOU's with will probably fill with their contracted conferences - so we are looking at large. The good news is that there will be a bunch of 6 win teams this year from conferences like CUSA and the bowls have to take a 7 win or better Belt team over a 6 win team if there is no contract.

Next year the Belt is getting a second bowl game (GMAC) from what I have been told and we will have a space for our #1 and #2 every year. Just showing that we can have 4 bowl eligible teams strengthens our negotiating power with that bowl game. People often complain about the Belt not having enough bowl tie-ins but in the history of the Belt, there have only been 2 or 3 teams with 7 wins that have sat home without a bid. Troy, MTSU, and FAU all have gotten at large bids without the conference spending a dime. You get what you pay for and until the Belt pays for a second bowl game, nothing will be guaranteed. The "need" just has not been there until the last couple of years.... but now the conference is stable enough to pay for two games a year.

[AnotherEagleFan]

Hopefully someone can help clarify this -

6 wins makes a school eligible for a Bowl - The Sun Belt will have at least 4 teams with 6 wins

2 teams will have at 8 wins - with a couple of upsets 4 teams could have 7 wins or more

Question - Do teams with 7 or more wins get preference over 6 win teams? Could a 7 or 8 win Sun Belt teams stay home while a 6 win team from a BCS conference gets selected?

Thanks

The odds are in your favor that if there is a 7 win team there will be room for them in a bowl game. It looks like the Sunbelt will have 2. A 6-6 team will likely stay at home no matter the conference.