Automatic bowl bids

[dochalladay32]

I did some research to see how things would go with my classic setups, particularly to see how I was getting a dozen or more independents into bowls. This is all based on the standard setup, except I had to add a few teams to the MWC and WAC after a dozen or so tries because they almost never go deep enough to send teams to the New Mexico Bowl.

New Mexico	MWC #5	WAC #4
Beef O'Brady's	C-USA #3	Big East #5
New Orleans	C-USA #4	Sun Belt #1
Las Vegas	Pac-12 #5	MWC #1
Poinsettia	WAC #3	MWC #2
Hawai'i	C-USA #5	WAC #2
Little Caesars Pizza	Big Ten #8	MAC #2
Belk	ACC #5	Big East #3
Kraft Fight Hunger	WAC #5	Pac-12 #6
Music City	SEC #7	ACC #6
Independence	MWC #3	ACC #7
Military	MAC #4	Army/Navy
Champs Sports	Big East #2	ACC #3
Humanitarian	MAC #3	WAC #1
Holiday	Big 12 #5	Pac-12 #3
Sun	Pac-12 #4	ACC #4
Armed Forces	C-USA #6	MWC #4
AutoZone Liberty	Big East #4	C-USA #1
Texas	Big Ten #6	Big 12 #6
Insight	Big 12 #4	Big Ten #5
Chick-fil-A	SEC #5	ACC #2
Outback	SEC #3	Big Ten #3
Capital One	SEC #2	Big Ten #2
Gator	SEC #6	Big Ten #4
TicketCity	C-USA #2	Big Ten #7
ROSE	Big Ten #1	Pac-12 #1
ALLSTATE SUGAR	SEC #1	AT LARGE
Alamo	Big 12 #3	Pac-12 #2
ORANGE	ACC #1	AT LARGE
FIESTA	Big 12 #1	AT LARGE
Godaddy.com	MAC #1	Sun Belt #2
AT&T Cotton	SEC #4	Big 12 #2
BBVA Compass	Big East #6	SEC #8
BCS NATIONAL	BCS #2	BCS #1

For the BCS bids, it will always take the champion of the conference, but I noticed for the MAC and C-USA, if the winner of the conference championship was not ranked #1 in the standings, they did not go to the game they probably should have (i.e. Houston does not win title in C-USA, but is ranked first so goes to Liberty Bowl); disappointing but not a killer. Probably would not be an error if C-USA was given a bid to the Orange for instance, at least I would think. Something else to test.

BCS at larges just go down the line of who is next available it appears. I've seen as many as 3 mid-majors make it to BCS games probably for this very reason. They probably did not write in the standard rules because then what defines a mid-major conference with custom conferences. No bids = top 10 in BCS, etc...

Notre Dame is a Big East school for selection procedures it seems. I've seen them in the Champs Sports, Belk, and Liberty and each time, their record fell in line in the Big East standings correctly for the bowl they were sent to. Notre Dame does not appear to have any ties to the Sun Bowl as in real life. Also, there are no secondary bids. For example, if the ACC has a 9th eligible team, they will send them to the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is not in the game. If a team is not available, it is automatically an at large bid.

Also pay attention if you give mid-major conferences a BCS bid but do not add any teams. Giving the Mountain West a BCS bid means the conference has 6 bowl bids, yet only 8 teams. It isn't like the SEC that hits 9 and 10 bowl eligible teams yearly so it will open up many at larges. The WAC rarely had more than 3 eligible teams. The Sun Belt is the best place to throw teams if you are trying to keep them out of the way. Only 2 guaranteed bids and as long as you didn't shrink the larger conferences, they won't invade too many at larges.

The following is a list of automatic bids which EXCLUDES BCS GAMES. If you give a team a BCS bid, add one to the number.

ACC - 6
Big 12 - 5
Big East + Notre Dame - 5
Big Ten - 7
Conference USA - 6
MAC - 4
MWC - 5
Pacific 12 - 5
SEC - 7
Sun Belt - 2
WAC - 5
Army/Navy - 1

[dochalladay32]

This goes over custom conferences, especially in a thread with dozens of pages where it would go unnoticed. If you don't make any changes, you'd probably still like to have an idea what game you are aiming for, especially since EA removed the bowl projections until the conference championship week. Not sure why they did that.

[patsfan1993]

My bad. I misunderstood your intent. I thought this was tied more into the classic setups you have. I agree this should be separate. Carry on as if I'm not even here.

[dochalladay32]

Quote: Originally Posted by patsfan1993

My bad. I misunderstood your intent. I thought this was tied more into the classic setups you have. I agree this should be separate. Carry on as if I'm not even here.

It's cool. It does have a big impact on custom conferences and I decided to check out bowl bids while looking at some other things. I didn't know Notre Dame was treated completely as a Big East member until today. I knew that had ties to a couple bowls that the Big East does, but I was surprised to see them in the Liberty Bowl, but I guess it is easier to program than to send them to the Sun or Champs Sports. They deviate from real life in several cases and its good to have an idea if you are even going to get invited at all. In real, the Pac-12 has 7 bids, but in game, you get only 6. ACC has up to 9 in real life, but only 7 in game with the BCS.

[JayD]

I've seen bowl projections pre conference championship week?

[dochalladay32]

Quote: Originally Posted by JayD

I've seen bowl projections pre conference championship week?

I simmed through up to week 12 and still didn't see anything. Maybe it appears the last week, but not too long ago, you'd see bowl projections soon after the BCS standings, but that does not appear so. It used to also tell you who to anticipate in the bowl (conference and position usually), but that is gone as well. It only tells you the team and bowl now.

[ZekeRoberts]

something interesting i found last night... i put the 7 worst teams (IMO) in the NCAA in the Sun Belt in my setup, and the conference champ turned out to be FIU at 4-2 and 5-7 overall... sure enough, no bowl bids for any Sun Belt team, as they were all 5-7 overall or worse... i actually thought that was kind of cool, because in previous iterations of the game we would sometimes see 5-7 and 4-8 teams go because of their conference standing!

the WAC and MAC were also bottom feeder conferences that only sent 3 teams each... meaning the ACC, B1G and SEC sent 9 teams each! i'm typing it up for my own purposes if anyone is interested beyond that

one final note on what happened in my first season... Oklahoma and Boise were undefeated and BCS #1 and #2... UNTIL the conference championship week... Boise beat an unranked 10-2 Colorado in my MWC, and #3 Wisconsin (10-2) beat a 10-2 Notre Dame (they were somewhere in the bottom of the top 10) in the B1G championship, and that was enough for the Badgers to jump into the BCS national championship and bounce out Boise State!!! oh those poor Broncos... guess I have to promote them to the Pac-12

[Tovarich]

If a team wins a conference at 5-7, it should get a bowl bid. This happened with North Texas maybe 10 years ago? Could've been more recently than that, but I believe they got swept in their 5 OOC games, and won the SBC at 5-1.

When you're advancing from the conference championship week to the bowl season week, it shows you the logo of the bowl that you end up in. Odd thing is, it shows it before the conference championship games are simmed, which is very strange. Maybe it would change depending on the results, I just find it odd it's been right every time.