Wake and Maryland aren’t options for Congressional Bowl?(updated 3:34 pm)

General55

Afternoon update:
At this point, I am not sure that this information is accurate. However, this appears to be great news though I disagree with Heather’s conclusions. As we have mentioned, Maryland is not an option for the Congressional Bowl because they have exams on the same date as the game. Apparently Navy’s agreement with the Congressional Bowl eliminates Wake Forest as well since the two teams met in the regular season. If necessary, then I imagine Navy could waive this part of their agreement. Assuming neither Wake or Maryland are options for the Congressional Bowl, then this seems to increase NC State’s chances of landing this particular bowl bid.

First, my bad for sending Wake Forest to the Eagle Bank Bowl in my earlier predictions. I didn’t know there was a clause in that contract that prevents Navy from playing any rematches. So that eliminates Wake Forest.

Consider Miami and NC State the top choices for the Eagle Bank Bowl. Before we figure out where NC State will wind up, though, the NCAA has to figure out how it views Clemson.

Here was the entry from earlier today:

As we attempted to explain earlier in the day, our bowl situation is a lot more complicated than some people have been led to believe.

The Wolfpack finished the regular season 6-6 overall, the minimum number of wins for bowl eligibility, but it is 4-4 in the ACC, which is either tied with or within one game of the nine other ACC bowl-eligible teams, which technically opens the door from Atlanta (Chik-fil-A Bowl) to Washington (EagleBank Bowl) for the Wolfpack.

But, and here comes the confusing and potentially disappointing part for the Wolfpack:

The ACC has 10 bowl-eligible teams and nine conference tie-ins. According to the NCAA Postseason Football Handbook, the ACC is required to fill its bowl slots with 7-win teams before 6-win teams.

N.C. State is the only bowl-eligible team with six wins, which under NCAA rule, leaves the Wolfpack on the outside looking in.

The NCAA doesn’t legislate the bowls, though. The bowls are contracted by the conferences and the two sides — not the NCAA — determine which teams plays where.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” said ACC associate commissioner Michael Kelly who coordinates the conference’s bowl contracts. “We have to get to the bottom of [the NCAA] rule and work with our bowl partners and the NCAA. It might be another seven days before we have an answer.”

Will Webb, the executive director of the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, said he believes the NCAA rule is open to interpretation.

“It’s really a matter of everyone working together,” Webb said. “As long as the [ACC] can find a home for all of its 7-5 teams, [the ACC bowl partners] can take a 6-6 team.” …

….At best, N.C. State’s looking at four open at-large spots. At worst, there could be two spots for four 6-6 BCS teams. There will be five 6-6 teams from outside the BCS conferences by the end of the week.

Here is the rule from the NCAA addressing this issue:

30.9.2.1 Exception — 12 Game Season. FBS

An institution with a record of six wins and six losses may be selected for participation in a bowl game under the following circumstances: (Adopted: 4/27/06 effective 8/1/06)

(a) The institution or its conference has a primary contractual affiliation, which existed prior to the first contest of the applicable season, with the sponsoring bowl organization. In the case of a conference contractual affiliation, all conference teams with winning records must be placed in one of the contracted bowl games before any institution with a record of six wins and six losses may be placed in a contracted bowl game. There shall be no contingency agreements with other sponsoring bowl organizations intended to enable an institution with a record of six wins and six losses to become eligible for those contests; or

(b) All contractual affiliations per Bylaw 30.9.2.1-(a) have been fulfilled and all institutions with winning records have received bowl invitations (either through a contractual affiliation or as an at-large selection).

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55 Responses to Wake and Maryland aren’t options for Congressional Bowl?(updated 3:34 pm)

  1. choppack1 12/01/2008 at 5:51 PM #

    DU – If football goes to playoff – IMHO, 16 is the MINIMUM teams they should allow. Even the FCD has 16 teams (I think.)

    I mean if we’re going to change forever the landscape of college football, don’t come up w/ some solution that doesn’t even solve the problem – come up w/ one so large – like the NCAA basketball – that every solid team is invited.

    BJD – you mention NCAA basketball regular season: I have to say I can’t remember when I looked forward to a non-ACC regular season game. I used to watch a lot of college basketball – that just isn’t the case anymore – until the NCAA tournament.

    If you want to kill interest in the regular season – support a playoff. A playoff may some day be needed to save the sport – but there hasn’t been enough disgust w/ the current system to scare people off.

  2. wufpaxno1 12/01/2008 at 6:19 PM #

    “I think a 16 playoff is way, way too many teams. There aren’t 16 teams worthy of winning the title after the regular season.”

    Daily, I understand your point but respectfully disagree. I think Mike Leach (TT)was right when he said that he felt like that there should be a 64 team play-off, not that I agree with 64 teams, but that we need a play-off of more than 8 or 16 teams. Leach said that the Texas State High School Champion played 16 games, and the NFL plays more than 16 games. Leach reasoned that if they are playing more games above us and below us, then we should be able to play more games as well and to drop the number of regular season games to accommodate a play-off.

    If we went off of the premise that there aren’t 16 teams worthy of playing for a national championship then we just wiped NC States 1983 Championship in Basketball off of the books, because they certainly were not one of the top 16 teams going into that tournament and therefore not worthy of being able to play for it.

    This goes along the lines that it is not where you start but where you finish that matters. State certainly finished strong this year and I would put them in the top 25 to 30 teams competitively in the country going into the post season. I certainly feel that they stack up nicely to an undefeated Ball State, Boise State, or Utah. Now I am not saying that they earned the right to play in a mythical play-off, but I also do not think that you could exclude USC (The real one), Florida, Penn State, or any of the one loss Big 12 schools, had they suffered the early season injury woes that State endured from the picture, if they had dropped an early season game for that reason.

    Football teams develop over the season, they are never the same team at the beginning of the year that they are at the end of the year. Would you rather the State team we see right now faced USC (The not so real version) or the State team that faced them in week one? The NCAA champion should be the best team at the end of the year, not the one that was most fortunate throughout the year. And since all teams play different schedules, and most are not even remotely similar, the only way to determine the true champion at the end of the year is on the playing field, through a play-off system that does not exclude teams that had a streak of bad luck early but have finished strong.

  3. Greywolf 12/01/2008 at 10:06 PM #

    Girlfriend in a Coma
    Dec 1st, 2008 at 11:07 am
    More factors (continuing from my 2 reasons above) pointing to the DC bid are:

    3) Wake already played Navy (Navy is already locked in) this year (and got drilled IIRC), so that matchup would not be attractive and would limit the Wake traveling crowd even more.

    4) Maryland has already said they can’t do the DC bowl due to exams.

    5) With Maryland and Wake effectively out of the picture for DC, it almost has to be us.”

    No, that MF Swofford can gerrymander Wake and Md into other bowls and set up someone like maybe, UNChoke, to to go to DC.

  4. Greywolf 12/01/2008 at 10:13 PM #

    Why we will never have a play-off replace the bowls, There might be 100 teams who could care less about the football championship and 20 who think they have a reasonable chance of winning it — some year.

    The rest like the high percentage of getting to a bowl and the perks that go with it.

    While I’m on the soapbox, the rich get richer (better) with an extra month of practice while the non-qualifiers miss the needed practice. I say let all teams, if they want to, practice intil Ded. 31st period.

  5. Greywolf 12/01/2008 at 10:46 PM #

    Alpha Wolf
    Dec 1st, 2008 at 1:26 pm
    I like the headline over at fark.com: ‘ACC goes 3-1 against God’s conference’

    I had a blast reading that stuff, especially this:
    10 quotes from sports commentators that they wish they could take back

    Greg Norman1.Weightlifting commentator at the Olympic snatch and jerk event: “This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warmup and it was amazing.”

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