The NCAA has quite the challenge on its hands: There are 40 bowls to be played, 80 teams are needed to populate them, and there are only (currently) 71 bowl-eligible teams. Hmmm …what to do?
As of now, the NCAA has a plan and its had a plan for quite some time now (since 2012). The problem is, the plan stinks and it won’t work nearly as well as they hoped it would when they initially put it in place:
In 2012, the NCAA was asked to come up with a safety net plan to fill all the bowls if there were not enough teams that met the minimum requirements.