On August 2, 2012, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors approved a significant change to the process to determine bowl eligible teams, going so far as to potentially allow 5-7 teams to go to a bowl, in case there were not enough regular bowl-eligible teams to fill every game.
If a bowl has one or more conferences/teams unable to meet their contractual commitments and there are no available bowl-eligible teams, the open spots can be filled by the particular bowl's sponsoring agencies as follows:[10]
Teams finishing 6-6 with one win against a team from the lower Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), regardless of whether that FCS school meets NCAA scholarship requirements. Until now, an FCS win counted only if that opponent met the scholarship requirementsspecifically, that school had to award at least 90% of the FCS maximum of 63 scholarship equivalents over a two-year period. In the 2012 season, programs in four FCS conferences cannot meet the 90% requirement (56.7 equivalents)the Ivy League, which prohibits all athletic scholarships; the Patriot League and Pioneer Football League, which do not currently award football scholarships; and the Northeast Conference, which limits football scholarships to 38 equivalents.
6-6 teams with two wins over FCS schools.
Teams that finish 6-7 with loss number seven in their conference championship game (that has been eliminated by the conference championship waiver rule).
6-7 teams that normally play a 13-team schedule, such as Hawaii's home opponents. Although Hawaii normally plays a 13-game schedule, it only played 12 games this season.
FCS teams who are in the final year of the two-year FBS transition process, if they have at least a 6-6 record.
Finally, 5-7 teams that have a top-5 Academic Progress Rate (APR) score. This was later adjusted to allow other 5-7 teams to be selected thereafterin order of their APR. [11]
