2016–17 NCAA football bowl games

The 2016–17 NCAA football bowl games are a series of college football bowl games which will complete the 2016 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The games will begin in late December 2016 and aside from the all-star games will end with the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship which will be played on January 9, 2017.

Schedule

The schedule for the 2016–17 bowl games is below. All times are EST (UTC−5).

College Football Playoff and Championship Game

The College Football Playoff system will be used to determine a national champion of Division I FBS college football. A 13-member committee of experts will rank the top 25 teams in the nation after each of the last seven weeks of the 2015 season. The top four teams in the final ranking will play a single-elimination semifinal round, with the winners advancing to the National Championship game.

The semi-final games will be held at the Fiesta Bowl and the Peach Bowl as part of a yearly rotation of three pairs of six bowls. Their winners will advance to the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida on January 9, 2017. As with the 2015 season, the two semi-final bowls will be held on New Year's Eve (Saturday, December 31, 2016), as the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are guaranteed exclusive TV time slots on January 2 if New Year's Day falls on a Sunday (in these cases, the legal New Year's Day holiday is observed on the following Monday, and there is a gentleman's agreement to not play New Year's Day bowl games against NFL games, which are played as usual when New Year's Day falls on a Sunday),^[1] regardless of whether they will be hosting a semifinal game.^[2][3][4]

To reduce the impact of the semi-final games' New Year's Eve scheduling—a factor that led to lower viewership of the 2015 semi-finals in comparison to 2014, it was announced on March 8, 2016 that the kickoff times of the two bowls would be pushed forward to 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. ET. CFP commissioner Bill Hancock suggested that starting the games earlier would allow viewers to partake in both the CFP games and New Year's festivities. As the earlier start intrudes on the early afternoon window for New Year's Six games, the 2016 Orange Bowl will instead be held as a primetime game on December 30, 2016. As a result, the "New Year's Six" bowls will be stretched across a period of four days, rather than two consecutive days of three games each.^[4][5] In July 2016, Hancock announced that future semi-finals, when not hosted by the Rose and Sugar Bowl games, will be primarily held on Saturdays.^[6][7]

Non-CFP bowl games

On April 11, 2016, the NCAA announced a freeze on new bowl games until after the 2019 season. The NCAA plans to revise its postseason eligibility criteria in the aftermath of the 2015 season, where a record three teams with losing records (5–7) were allowed to participate in bowls due to there being not enough bowl-eligible teams, and the inaugural Arizona Bowl had to be played between two Mountain West teams due to the lack of eligible teams to meet its other tie-ins.^[8][9][10]

Prior to the moratorium, multiple new bowl games were proposed for or approved to begin play in 2016, including one in Myrtle Beach, the Medal of Honor Bowl (which planned to convert itself from an all-star game to a sanctioned bowl after the NCAA lifted its ban on postseason championships at pre-determined locations in South Carolina),^[11] the Sun Belt/American Austin Bowl.^[10][12] and a Mountain West/Pac-12 bowl in Melbourne, Australia.^[13][14][15] The Sun Belt subsequently announced that it would become a new primary tie-in for the Arizona Bowl.^[16]

All-star games

Selection of the teams

Bowl-eligible teams

• American (7): Central Florida, Houston, Memphis, Navy, South Florida, Temple, Tulsa
• ACC (11): Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami (FL), North Carolina, North Carolina State, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest
• Big Ten (10): Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin
• Big 12 (6): Baylor, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TCU, West Virginia
• Conference USA (7): Louisiana Tech, Middle Tennessee, North Texas (qualified vs APR score), Old Dominion, Southern Mississippi, UTSA, Western Kentucky
• Independent (2): Army^[A], BYU
• MAC (6): Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan, Miami (OH), Ohio, Toledo, Western Michigan
• Mountain West (7): Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Wyoming, Hawaii^[B]
• Pac-12 (6): Colorado, Stanford, USC, Utah, Washington, Washington State
• SEC (12): Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State (qualified vs APR score), South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt
• Sun Belt (6): Appalachian State, Arkansas State, Idaho, UL Lafayette, South Alabama, Troy

Number of bowl berths available: 80
Number of bowl-eligible teams: 75
Number of conditional bowl-eligible teams: 3 (Army, Hawaii, South Alabama)
Number of teams qualified by APR: 2 (North Texas, Mississippi State)

Bowl-eligible teams that did not receive a berth

None are expected.

Bowl-ineligible teams

The teams with 5–7 records will be selected based on the highest APR (Academic Progress Rating) if not enough teams qualify, and it is guaranteed there will be at least two open bowl berths. Teams with more than seven losses or below the cutoff for the APR rankings (marked with an asterisk) are already eliminated.

• The American (5, all eliminated): SMU, Cincinnati, Connecticut, East Carolina, Tulane
• ACC (3, all eliminated): Duke, Syracuse, Virginia
• Big Ten (4, all eliminated): Illinois, Michigan State, Purdue, Rutgers
• Big 12 (4, all eliminated): Texas , Texas Tech, Iowa State, Kansas
• Conference USA (7): Charlotte*, Florida Atlantic*, Florida International*, Marshall*, Rice*, UTEP*
• Independent (2, both eliminated): Notre Dame, Massachusetts
• MAC (6, all eliminated): Akron, Northern Illinois, Ball State, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Kent State
• Mountain West (5, all eliminated): Nevada, Fresno State, San José State, Utah State, UNLV
• Pac-12 (6, all eliminated ): Arizona State, California, Arizona, Oregon, Oregon State, UCLA
• SEC (2):Missouri*, Ole Miss*
• Sun Belt (5, all eliminated): Georgia Southern, Louisiana–Monroe, Georgia State, New Mexico State, Texas State

Number of bowl-ineligible teams: 50

2014–2015 APR Rankings^[17] of 5-7 teams that could still qualify for a bowl game to fill unfilled bowl slots (two teams will qualify this way):

1. North Texas (5–7): APR Rate = 984 – guaranteed to qualify via APR
2. Mississippi St. (5–7): APR Rate = 971* – guaranteed to qualify via APR (Cut-off)
3. Texas (5–7): APR Rate = 971
4. Northern Illinois (5–7): APR Rate = 970
5. California (5–7): APR Rate = 960*
6. Arizona St. (5–7): APR Rate = 960
7. Ole Miss (5–7): APR Rate = 958
8. Nevada (5–7): APR Rate = 949
9. Akron (5–7): APR Rate = 947
10. SMU (5–7): APR Rate = 945
11. Texas Tech (5–7): APR Rate = 941
12. Georgia Southern (5–7): APR Rate = 940

(Cut-off based on number of bowl allocations remaining)

Mississippi State and California win respective tiebreakers due to having a higher 2014–15 APR score. The NCAA Handbook states if two teams have the same multi year APR score, then the team with the highest single season APR in the most recent report is selected first.

Note: Being bowl-ineligible does not, in itself, exclude a team from the chance to play in a bowl game. Tiebreaker procedures based on a school's Academic Progress Rate (APR) allowed for the possibility of 5–7 teams to play in bowl games since not enough teams qualified to fill all 80 spots with at least a 6–6 record.

References