I'm not exactly sure, but Benson has mentioned it several times. It's to prevent conferences from signing more bowl agreements than they are able to fill on average. Conferences are supposedly only allowed as many primary tie-ins as their 4-year average of bowl eligibility/bowl appearances/winning seasons by the conference's membership for that year. He's mentioned all three, but I think bowl eligibility is what is used. I'm not sure about rounding.
Don't get your hopes up about 5 tie-ins for 2014.
Looking roughly at the schedules of CUSA teams, I see 6 bowl teams for next year. We all know were to put predictions, but Tulsa, Rice, Tech, Marshall and ECU look solid with one or more of USM, UAB or Tulane popping up with six wins.
God bless all of you-- nothing to visit about Tech football right now --- we are so desparate for a topic to dicuss we are discussing our Bowl invitation --
Other msg boards are going through the same thing. It's just that time of the year where nothing is really going on.
No shit you can knock it if you want, but if we played U of L at Laffy in the NOLA Bowl the Dome would be rockin'! Crowd of about 60-65,000 with sides divided equally would be a lot more fun to watch for me personally than a measly 17,000 people scattered throughout a stadium against a 6-6 Purdue team in Dallas.
Well, I'd WAY rather be playing an AQ conference team with a decent national name (like Purdue) than a hyphenated team like UL-L. Just my opinion.
You can't be serious? You'd rather play Washington State or Iowa State than have the awesome tailgating and gameday experience of playing against a pretty legit mid-major fanbase in the party capital of the world? Now if we have a chance to play against an Oklahoma, Georgia, Michigan, etc. I would be all over that. If we aren't playing in that bowl, then I'm looking forward to the next best thing for the fans and players, which would be in a damn neared sold out Superdome.
Schools that we would be playing the Heart of Dallas or the BBVA Compass Bowl or whatever are schools we should be playing in the regular season (NC State, Ole Miss, whoever). The bowl game is supposed to be a celebration and a party, not a snooze fest against a Big 10 team who went 2-6 in conference play but beat Mcneese, ULM, Southeast Mississippi Delta School of Cosmetology, and another similar school in OOC play. That's not getting name recognition, that's playing a ho-hum team on a Friday afternoon at 1 p.m. two days after Christmas when nobody in the world gives a flying f*ck.
I can see your point. It just reflects better from a historical standpoint to play AQ Schools in Bowl games.