The NCAA Is Discussing Eliminating Bowl Eligibility in 2020 and Just Letting Everybody Who's Still Playing Go to a Bowl Game

In a normal 2020 college football season, we would have 42 bowl games at the end of the season which teams who finished with six wins would be eligible to attend — although recently there have been several 5-7 teams to sneak in with too few teams reaching six wins. But this year, we don't even have enough FBS teams competing to fill all those games if everybody made a bowl game. So what is going to happen?

Apparently, everybody might get to participate in the postseason, regardless of record.

The Athletic — “We’ve already begun discussions with the NCAA about possibly eliminating the notion of bowl eligibility this year,” Football Bowl Association Executive Director Nick Carparelli told The Athletic. “Going into the year, everyone who plays college football in the fall would have the ability to play in a bowl game regardless of record and standings.”

The rules for bowl eligibility were obviously going to have to be changed this year anyway, given the fact many teams are playing 10-game, conference-only schedules. Even going 5-5 in an all-SEC slate is not an easy task. So since we have to change the rules anyway, we may as well let everyone in who wants to keep playing.

All those games are made for television money anyway, so they're going to figure out a way to have somebody on the field, even if it's Army and Middle Tennessee State for the third time this season.

Things could get complicated with conference tie-ins to specific games with some playing in the fall and some slated to play in the spring, but that could potentially mean two bowl seasons to give a postseason to everybody. If we get three bowl seasons in the next 16 months, that would be at least some sort of consolation for all the turmoil in which college football currently finds itself. And these players who have gone through all this deserve some sort of reward, regardless of what record their teams ends up with at the end of this season.

Let everybody in, I don't care. The more college football games, the better.

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