Sample question:
“Why does Wake Forest, a team we finished ahead of in the ACC, and a team we’d at least triple in ticket sales, get to go to Charlotte and we have to go 2,000 miles to the Sun Bowl?”
What we/you deserve makes no difference to bowl selection committees. They are looking for the most attractive match-up they can arrange. Bottom line:Teams go to the bowls where they are invited. There is some selection order or sequence set by whom, I don’t know.
There are some preset deals such as the ACC deal with the Orange Bowl and some gentlemen’s agreements or so I hear. Other than those deals there are no “rights” to bowls. In the context of bowl match-ups your/our conference record matters not. Many years ago ticket sales were important considerations. Not so much with the TV money coming in. I’m sure there are opinions out there about this aspect of bowl selection.
Bowl selection is somewhat like the NFL or NHL draft. Bowls know pretty much the pool of teams available before they make their selection but they make it when their time comes up. We can speculate on why the Bowl A didn’t invite us but we can be sure that in the opinion of the selection committee it was the best possible match-up for the bowl.
The only thing we can be sure of is our opinion doesn’t matter nor apparently does our lobbying the ACC office.
