Can you imagine two SEC teams playing in a bowl game (that doesn’t include the national championship)?
Well, that happened last season when two Mountain West Conference teams — Colorado State and Nevada — played in the Arizona Bowl. That was the first time that two teams from the same league met in a bowl game since the 1979 Orange Bowl, when Nebraska and Oklahoma played.
That matchup last postseason happened in the midst of the NCAA scrambling to fill three bowl slots with 5-7 teams as last season marked the first with 40 bowl games.
Well, even more bowls might be in store.
A report by CBS Sports’ Jon Solomon says that Austin and Charleston, S.C., want to host bowl games in 2016.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby voiced concern over the system.
“If we decide 7-5 (for bowl eligibility), that’s fine. If we decide 6-6, that’s fine,” Bowlsby told Solomon. “I don’t think there ought to be a waiver process. At what point are we going to be putting 4-8 teams out there? If we continue to have more bowls, at some point in time there’s a mathematical impossibility of enough teams with a winning record being there.”
More bowl games may contribute to the argument that the postseason is becoming watered down. Last season, Missouri was invited as a 5-7 team to fill one of the three necessary bowl slots, but it refused.
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
