From the sounds of it, Kansas coach Mark Mangino believes his Kansas team is a near-lock to make a bowl game if it defeats Missouri on Saturday.
“Everything I’m hearing from my sources, which I think are pretty credible, (tells) me that 6-6, for us in the Big 12, would qualify for a bowl,” Mangino said Tuesday.
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Is it that simple for the Jayhawks, though?
According to Bob Burda, the Big 12’s assistant commissioner in charge of communications, the Jayhawks perhaps aren’t a slam dunk to qualify for a bowl even if they picked up their sixth victory.
Let’s start with the scenario that would 100 percent put the Jayhawks in a bowl game: If KU picked up its sixth win and two Big 12 teams also qualified for BCS bowls.
The Big 12 conference receives seven automatic bids to non-BCS bowls. If KU picked up its sixth victory this weekend, it would be the ninth bowl-eligible Big 12 team.
So the math is simple. If two Big 12 teams make BCS bowls, then seven Big 12 teams are left for the other seven bowls.
If only one Big 12 team makes a BCS bowl, though, then the other eight bowl-eligible teams would be left to fight it out for the final seven spots. More on that a little later.
So what would need to happen for the Big 12 to get two teams in the BCS?
It could actually occur two different ways.
If Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma on Saturday, then most likely the Big 12 would get both Texas and Oklahoma State into BCS bowls, as both would currently have BCS rankings in the top 12.
There’s another zanier way for the Big 12 to get two teams in the BCS: if Texas lost to Nebraska in the Big 12 championship game. In that scenario, Nebraska would get an automatic berth into the Fiesta Bowl as the Big 12 championship game winner, and Texas would still most likely receive an at-large BCS berth with only one loss.
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What should be scary for KU fans is another likely scenario that would only put Texas in a BCS bowl.
If UT wins against Nebraska, and Oklahoma State loses to Oklahoma on Saturday (OU opened as a 9 1/2-point favorite; another way of looking at this is that Vegas believed if the two teams played four games, OSU would approximately win once), then Texas would be the only Big 12 team eligible to play in a BCS bowl, as BCS bowl teams have to finish 14th or better in the final BCS poll. Oklahoma State, which is currently 12th in the BCS, would likely drop more than two spots with a loss to OU.
So, let’s say OSU has a 25-percent chance of beating OU on Saturday*. And let’s say Nebraska has a 10-percent chance of beating Texas in the Big 12 championship (though that number might be a bit optimistic).
Assuming those numbers and probabilities, the Big 12 would have two BCS teams in 13 of 40 possible outcomes. That would give KU a 32.5 percent chance of being assured a bowl game.
That’s hardly a slam dunk.
* — The line has since moved to OU being an eight-point favorite, so perhaps you can bump the numbers up a couple percentage points.
There are other scenarios, of course, but they’re much more risky.
If KU did pick up its sixth win, it would be fighting for the Big 12’s final two bowl slots with Texas A&M and Iowa State (assuming OU beats OSU). The two final bowls with Big 12 ties are the Independence Bowl (Shreveport, La.) and the Texas Bowl (Houston, Texas).
It would be hard to imagine a bowl not taking Texas A&M, especially with its devoted football fans.
Iowa State also would be a compelling draw, as the Cyclones haven’t played in a bowl game since 2005. A bowl game also could provide a nice reward (and extra month of practice) for first-year coach Paul Rhoads.
Consider this as well: If the Independence Bowl took ISU, the Texas Bowl would jump at the chance to take A&M, as College Station and Houston are less than 100 miles apart*.
* — And, this is pure speculation on my part, but I guess it’s possible the two bowls could come to a gentleman’s agreement to allow the Texas Bowl to take Texas A&M.
KU’s only hope here would be for the Independence Bowl to take Texas A&M and then have the Texas Bowl decide between KU and ISU.
Even then, it might not work out for KU. Everyone saw two years ago how important an athletic director can be in this process, as Lew Perkins helped convinced the Orange Bowl to take Kansas over Missouri even though MU had defeated KU a few weeks earlier.
Would Perkins be willing to go to bat for this year’s team? Especially when the Jayhawks might fire their coach in the next few weeks?
KU’s only other hope would be to grab an at-large bid from a lower-level bowl that is affiliated with a conference that can’t fill all its bowl slots.
The chances here aren’t great, either*.
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Burda says that two bowls for sure will have an at-large spot available, and based on the rest of the season’s results, there could be the potential for two to four more spots to open up.
When picking at-large teams, though, bowls are required to take teams with seven or eight wins before they take six-win teams.
Middle Tennessee State (8-3) and Northern Illinois (7-4) will automatically take two of those at-large spots.
Here are some other six-win teams that could help their bowl chances with another win this weekend: Bowling Green, UCLA, Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe.
If those teams win this weekend, they would automatically move in front of KU in the bowl pecking order by getting to seven wins.
Here’s another problem for KU: Notre Dame (6-5) will not qualify for the BCS and will clog up another at-large bid. Even if the Fighting Irish are 6-6, you can bet they will be the first ones chosen among any six-win teams.
KU also has to worry about another group: those teams that have five wins now but could still pick up their sixth win.
According to Burda, as of today, there are 69 bowl-eligible teams and 68 bowl slots. There also is the potential for nine more teams to become bowl eligible.
They are: Kansas (5-6), Toledo (5-6), Kent State (5-6), UAB (5-6), Wyoming (5-6), Hawaii (5-6), Duke (5-6), Army (5-6) and UConn (5-5 with two games left).
So even if an at-large spot was available for a six-win team, KU potentially could be competing against the six-win teams above (most notably UCLA) and also the five-win teams above that get to six wins. UConn could even get to seven wins, which would allow the Huskies to leapfrog the Jayhawks for an at-large bid.
It’s not impossible for KU to sneak in, as ESPN’s Bruce Feldman has KU as an at-large team in the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho, in his latest bowl projections.
After breaking it all down, though, a whole lot would have to go right in the final two weeks for a six-win team like KU to have a chance at an at-large bowl. And even then, the Jayhawks would have to be chosen over a team like UCLA and probably would have to make a great pitch to get themselves in a bowl.
* — I posted this two weeks ago in the comments section of one of my blogs: “Other bowls have spots to fill because some conferences do not have enough bowl-eligible teams. If KU goes 6-6, it will 100 percent go to a bowl.”
Yep, I was wrong, too. Can I get a retraction?
The point is this: KU fans wanting their team to make a bowl need to cheer their hearts out Saturday for the Jayhawks at 2:30 p.m.
But they also need to make sure to cheer for the Oklahoma State Cowboys at 11:30 a.m.
