There are 80 slots available and 71 bowl eligible teams..the SEC has enough to fill their 10 slots..here are the teams, including Missouri, Kentucky, and Texas that can still get to 6 wins. Wonder if all 12 SEC teams would get invites if Missouri and Kentucky win?
With one week left to go (two weeks for the Big 12 and Sunbelt), 71 teams are at 6 wins. You have twelve teams at 5-6, one team at 5-5, and four teams at 4-6. With 80 bids, nine of these seventeen teams need to get to 6-6 to avoid the embarrassment of a 5-7 team making a bowl. The schedule is as follows:
5-6 (at home against non-bowl team) -- Old Dominion (vs. Florida Atlantic); Buffalo (vs. Massachusetts)
5-6 (at home against bowl team) -- East Carolina (vs. Cincinnati); Nebraska (vs. Iowa); Illinois (vs. Northwestern); Minnesota (vs. Wisconsin); San Jose State (vs. Boise State); Washington (vs. Washington State); Kentucky (vs. Louisville)
5-6 (on road against non-bowl team) -- Tulsa (at Tulane); Virginia Tech (at Virginia); Indiana (at Purdue)
5-6 (on road against bowl team) -- Missouri (at Arkansas)
5-5 -- South Alabama (at Georgia Southern, vs. Appalachian State -- both bowl teams)
4-6 -- Texas (vs. Texas Tech, at Baylor -- both bowl teams); Kansas State (at Kansas, vs. West Virginia -- West Virginia, a bowl team); Georgia State (vs. Troy, at Georgia Southern); Louisiana-Lafayette (at Appalachian State; vs. Troy)
Assuming that teams only beat non-bowl teams, you would have only five of the 17 make it to 6-6 leaving four bids for 5-7 teams. While some of the teams playing a bowl team might win, some of the teams playing a non-bowl team might lose. The best argument for getting to 80 is that many of the bowl teams have nothing to lose. Only Iowa and Baylor still have something to play for with the rest being shuffled to the conference tie-ins that care less for records and more about ability to sell tickets to bring fans to spend money at hotels and restaurants in the host city.