That both Texass and Moo U may get bowl bids despite their 5-7 records based on their APR scores.
It appears that the APR score for both schools in football is 971. Which is OK (better than ours) but not very high on the FBS APR list. I counted 41 FBS schools with better than 971. Of course, the important factor is how many of those 41 have five wins. USA Today is reporting that the top two five-win teams on the APR list are North Texas and Moo U, which gets priority over Texass due to higher one-year APR number.
There are currently 76 bowl eligible teams with 6+ wins. La-Lafayette and South Alabama can become bowl eligible if they win this week. If they get there, that leaves two spots for five-win teams, and UNT and Moo U would be those two. Texas would have a spot if either ULL or USA loses. If neither ULL nor USA win, Northern Illinois would be the fourth 5-win team eligible. Remember that three 5-7 teams made bowls last year; all three of them then won their bowl.
Importance of that at Texas is that Tom Herman would have a chance to observe the players in bowl workouts. Seems like that gave Petrino a leg up on evaluating our talent when he took over from HDN/Herring after the Cotton Bowl disaster vs. Misery.
Moving on to our own bowl prospects:
I’m seeing multiple projections out today sending us to the Belk Bowl, against either VaTech or Miami. CFN still has us in a Memphis rematch with K-State. NBCsports.com has us in Jacksonville against Miami. Nobody (yet) is putting us in Nashville, but it’s still early.