2023 FBS BOWL ELIGIBLE LIST
As of Sunday 12/3/2023
First, how do teams become bowl eligible?
The quick version: a team is bowl eligible if it has six or more regular season wins.
The longer version: it's not quite as easy as that. There are three main exceptions:
- Hawaii and New Mexico State play 13 regular season games, so they need 7 wins.
- Army plays two FCS teams (Delaware State and Holy Cross); its 6 wins must include at least 5 FBS wins.
- Jacksonville State, Sam Houston, and James Madison are not bowl eligible as they are in the second year
of their two-year FCS-to-FBS transitions. Actually, they can become bowl eligible; see "What happens if there
are not enough bowl eligible teams to fill all of the bowls?". (The NCAA has said that James Madison will not
receive a waiver to get in automatically now that it has six wins.)
What happens if there are not enough bowl eligible teams to fill all of the bowls?
In that case, teams become bowl eligible in this order:
- Usually, the first step is, "Ignore the rule that says an FCS school has to give out a certain number of
scholarships over the past two years to count"; however, no FBS team plays an FCS team that does not give out
enough scholarships.
- A 6-7 Hawaii and New Mexico State.
- Jacksonville State and James Madison become bowl eligible at this point, as they have 6 wins.
Note that if there are 81 bowl eligible teams besides Jacksonville State and James Madison,
James Madison does not get the last spot automatically because of its higher APR;
the bowls, conferences, and teams work it out amongst themselves which one gets into a bowl.
- If there are still openings, teams with 5-7 records (except that an Army team with two FCS wins needs
to be 6-6) become eligible in order of their 2021-22 four-year football APR (announced in April, 2023),
with ties broken by comparing the tied teams' one-year football APRs, starting with 2021-22 and working backward
one year at a time. (A number of sites reported that the previous year's four-year football APR is the
tiebreaker; this is incorrect.)
There is an exception: by conference rule, a 5-7 Pac-12 team must decline all bowl bids.
Note that a 5-8 Hawaii or New Mexico State would not be bowl eligible.
The NCAA will only announce enough names at the top of the list to fill the remaining spots. Unlike in the past,
when the 6-win teams would accept their bowl games and then the 5-win teams would choose their bowls one team at
a time from the ones still with openings, these teams are assigned bowl bids the same way that all other teams do.
Important: once all of the bowl bids have been accepted, if any team has to withdraw, the bowl's organizers may
choose any team that is not on a postseason ban, regardless of record or APR, to replace it.
Click Here to access the NCAA's APR database
To see the APRs, select "Sport: Football" and "Year: 2021-22", then click on "Search", then, at "Show ___ Entries", select "All".
2021-22 is the most recent year of APRs; the 2022-23 APRs should be released around April, 2024.
Note that teams are in alphabetical order by their full name (e.g. "University of Arkansas, Fayetteville" for Arkansas, and "U.S. Military Academy" for Army West Point),
and include FCS as well as FBS teams.
To see a team's current one-year APR, click on its name; a PDF file will be generated, which shows the APRs for all sports. The third column, headed "2021-22 APR," is the one-year APR.
To see a previous year's one-year APR, go back to the main search page, select the year, click on "Search" again, then click on the team name to generate the PDF for that year.
Note that the 2019-20 APRs were never made public by the NCAA, although they are believed to exist.
Here is the list of bowls (click here if
you want details on when they are being played and where you can watch them)
| CFP Playoff |
| Rose | Michigan | Alabama |
| Sugar | Washington | Texas |
| CFP Bowls |
| Orange | Florida State | Georgia |
| Fiesta | Oregon | Liberty |
| Cotton | Ohio State | Missouri |
| Peach | Penn State | Mississippi |
| Other Bowls |
| 68 Ventures | Eastern Michigan | South Alabama |
| Alamo | Arizona | Oklahoma |
| Arizona | Toledo | Wyoming |
| Armed Forces | Air Force | James Madison |
| Birmingham | Duke | Troy |
| Boca Raton | South Florida | Syracuse |
| Camellia | Arkansas State | Northern Illinois |
| Citrus | Tennessee | Iowa |
| Cure | Appalachian State | Miami Ohio |
| Duke's Mayo | West Virginia | North Carolina |
| Famous Idaho Potato | Georgia State | Utah State |
| Famous Toastery | Old Dominion | Western Kentucky |
| Fenway | SMU | Boston College |
| First Responder | Rice | Texas State |
| Frisco | Marshall | Texas-San Antonio |
| Gasparilla | Central Florida | Georgia Tech |
| Gator | Kentucky | Clemson |
| Gronk LA | Boise State | UCLA |
| Guaranteed Rate | Kansas | UNLV |
| Hawaii | Coastal Carolina | San Jose State |
| Holiday | USC | Louisville |
| Independence | California | Texas Tech |
| Las Vegas | Northwestern | Utah |
| Liberty | Memphis | Iowa State |
| Military | Tulane | Virginia Tech |
| Music City | Auburn | Maryland |
| Myrtle Beach | Georgia Southern | Ohio |
| New Mexico | Fresno State | New Mexico State |
| New Orleans | Jacksonville State | Louisiana |
| Pinstripe | Rutgers | Miami |
| Pop-Tarts | Kansas State | North Carolina State |
| Quick Lane | Bowling Green | Minnesota* |
| ReliaQuest | Wisconsin | LSU |
| Sun | Oregon State | Notre Dame |
| Texas | Oklahoma State | Texas A&M |
*There is some question as to whether or not Minnesota would still be bowl eligible if
Navy beats Army on 12/9. While there are some reports claiming that either (a) Navy was
not bowl eligible when bowls were announced on 12/3, or (b) even if Navy does become bowl
eligible, all of the bowls are now filled, there is no definitive announcement from the
NCAA that Navy's bowl eligibility would not mean that it replaces Minnesota as one of the 82
bowl eligible teams.
However, even if Navy does become bowl eligible if it wins, it may decide to decline the bowl
bid - for example, because there would already be a considerable number of Minnesota fans
(not to mention the team iteslf, plus its band) who have made flight, travel, and ticket
arrangements. Remember, these Navy players are pretty much all going to be officers in the
U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, and telling the Minnesota fans, "Sorry about the problems with
having to cancel your tickets and hotel reservations and sell your tickets," is not exactly
expressing the Leadership or Character you would expect from officers.