No good stories or anything fun this week, just the projections. We'll see how right I am next week.

Flickr image courtesy New Orleans Lady

For the first time this year I project that there will be no teams with winning or .500 records sitting at home over the holidays. In my projection below I do include two teams with losing records, SMU who is projected to go 6-7 by losing the Conference USA title game and Idaho who is also projected to go 6-7 by virtue of the thirteen game schedule they play since they have Hawaii on the road this year. Most likely the NCAA will allow these two teams in before allowing in a team that has only five wins on the season.

Inaccurately, most news agencies have reported that this will be the first time that a team with a losing record has received a bowl invitation, but that is erroneous. In 2001, the University of North Texas was conference co-champions of the Sun Belt Conference with Middle Tennessee State whom they beat in head to head competition that year. Though North Texas had an overall record of 5-6 and MTSU was 8-3, both teams were 5-1 in conference with the head to head tiebreaker going to North Texas. The NCAA upheld the decision of the conference whose tiebreaker rules had been established in the league charter and thus, North Texas went to the New Orleans Bowl with a 5-6 record.

North Texas went on to lose New Orleans Bowl to Colorado State while Middle Tennessee State sat home over the holidays having not received an invitation.

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