OT: FSU technically ineligible for Independence Bowl

Submitted by rc15 on

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Credit to u/baconydraco, one of the mods on r/cfb for researching this.

Apparently by NCAA rules, a win against an FCS team only counts if the opponent is using at least 90% of the 63 scholarship limit, which Deleware State did not.

This rule would have also made WMU ineligible (win vs. Wagner) and Buffalo ineligible (win vs. Colgate); however, UTSA would be eligible meaning they wouldn't need to go to teams that were 5-7 like in previous years.

Seems like its too late to put UTSA in the Independence Bowl (12/27), but it's interesting because FSU has the longest bowl streak. I wonder if ESPN catches wind of this if whenever they bring up the streak, they will say something like "FSU has the longest bowl streak, but not the longest streak of bowl eligibility".

Anyways, seems like a cool piece of trivia.

Longballs Dong…

December 21st, 2017 at 6:54 PM ^

I don't care much for SNL either but it's still popular so I don't go around shitting on people.  If you can't remember it being funny it sounds like you never thought it was funny.  Great, why come here to point out that you don't like something someone else just referenced?  Do people like this walk around in the real world just telling people what they hate and what to do about it?  Hi Betty, your sweather is ugly.  You should wear a blouse.  Hey Mike, your dog sucks, it should be put down so you can get a german shepherd.  Anyway, have a great day!

JHumich

December 21st, 2017 at 1:59 PM ^

More like escape clauses to facilitate punishing whomever we wish, whenever we wish. 

A school of our caliber has to have a very skillfully and expensively staffed compliance department. I understand that at FSU they don't care two hills of beans. But if Michigan was still scheduling FCS, you can bet Harbaugh would have someone on staff, part of whose job it would be to esnure any FCS school we play to stay above the 90% threshold, maybe even recruiting lower level players to those schools for them...

Danny R C

December 21st, 2017 at 1:28 PM ^

I hope Taggart struggles because there are plenty of guys that would typically go to FSU, that might look elsewhere, if they are doing bad. Give us more Florida recruits!

Mr poonsniffle

December 21st, 2017 at 1:31 PM ^

If there were not enough eligible teams with 6 wins, then teams with 5 wins become bowl eligible.



Out of the teams with 5 wins, the teams with the best academic progress rate (APR) are offered first. The APR is a gauge of how well the student athletes are doing in the classroom.



Needless to say, FSU would not get in based on APR. There were several segments on BTN saying that Minnesota would have the highest APR of the 5 win teams if it came down to that.

LSAClassOf2000

December 21st, 2017 at 2:00 PM ^

Yes indeed. In fact, I believe Minnesota was one of the three teams in the 2015-16 bowl season to be awarded a bowl based on this very rule, as well as San Jose Sate and Nebraska, if I am not mistaken. As I recall, this was also the year that the Arizona Bowl ended up featuring members of the same conference because neither of their conference tie-ins could produce enough eligible teams. 

Having 40 bowls is such fun....

tlo2485

December 21st, 2017 at 2:10 PM ^

I hate FSU as much as anyone else here, but I don't think it's very uncommon for college's to stretch the truth pretty thin to claim things. Who has the longest streak of 100,000+ fans in attendance?