31, Maybe 32 Bowls

The 2006-07 college football bowl season will have a record 31 games, maybe 32 if the Houston Bowl is recertified. The four new bowls that will join the party are the: International Bowl, Birmingham Bowl, New Mexico Bowl and, of course, the infamous 5th BCS bowl.

The International Bowl will pit MAC vs Big East from the Sky Dome in Toronto. The Birmingham Bowl will pit CUSA vs Big East from Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. The New Mexico Bowl will pit WAC vs MWC from University Stadium in Albuquerque. The 5th BCS bowl will be played one week after the Fiesta Bowl at the new Arizona Cardinal Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

What do all these bowl games mean? Well, for me I love to predict college bowl game matchups, but I even think that 32 bowls is too many. 6-6 teams will now be eligible to participate in a bowl game. However, all teams within a respective conference, with a better record, must be invited ahead of any 6-6 team.

It was just two years ago when 6-5 Akron was the only bowl eligible team not invited to a bowl. Granted, South Carolina and Clemson, both bowl eligible at 6-5, suspended themselves from bowl participation, but it was evident that the bowls get watered down after the top 15-20 bowls select their teams.

But now that the bowl games are complete, I will assume the Houston Bowl will be recertified, I will give my pre-preseason bowl predictions of all the 32 bowls. I know it is early but the season is slow and I have not researched enough to write any previews. Besides predicting bowl games are a crapshoot, anyways, until at least after the first week of December.

This blog will have more action now that the NFL draft is complete and I can start focusing on college football predictions. But the Fresno State Football Blog still takes up a majority of my time.