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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/bakonydraco on 2025-12-04 22:30:39+00:00.

After an impressive opening 31-17 win over an Alabama team likely headed to the Playoff, Florida State didn’t finish the season where they wanted to, currently at 5-7. This falls below the 6-6 threshold required for traditional bowl eligibility. There are 82 spots in bowls and the Playoff this year, and 80 FBS teams hit that threshold.

Per the 2025-2026 NCAA Division I Manual, the relevant bylaw is:

18.7.2.1.3 Exception – Insufficient Number of Eligible Institutions

This outlines the pecking order of how ineligible teams are selected. In brief, the first 3 categories are:

  1. Teams with 2 FCS wins (only one is normally countable)
  2. Teams that played 13 games that went 6-7
  3. Teams that are in their final year of FCS transition and hit 6-6. Missouri State and Delaware are both in this bucket, bringing us to 82 teams for 82 spots.

With Kansas State reportedly considering declining a bowl game following Chris Klieman’s retirement, there may be one additional spot available.

Here is the full text of the next criterion:

(d) An institution that finished its season with a minimum of five wins that count toward meeting the definition of a deserving team and a maximum of seven losses but achieved a multiyear Academic Progress Rate (APR) that permits postseason participation. Alternates identified pursuant to this condition shall be identified as eligible in descending order based on the institutions’ multiyear Academic Progress Rates.

  • (1) If multiple institutions achieved the same multiyear rate, the institution with the highest single-year Academic Progress Rate, beginning with the most recent reporting year and continuing until a higher rate is found, shall be identified as eligible first. An institution that is identified as an alternate must declare whether it will participate in a bowl game. An alternate institution that declares an intention to participate shall select an available bowl game in which to participate.
  • (2) If an institution is unable to participate in a bowl game after accepting a bid, the bowl entity shall select an alternate from among the remaining Football Bowl Subdivision institutions with a multiyear Academic Progress Rate that permits postseason participation to replace the team that accepted the bid and is no longer able to participate in the bowl game.

We were tracking the bowl eligible and 5-7 teams at scoreboard.redditcfb.com/needle, and the top teams that finished at 5-7 were Florida State and Auburn, tied at 990 for the 2023-24 multi-year Rate. Per 18.7.2.1.3(d)1, the tiebreaker is to take the single-year rate, and work backwards until the tie is broken. Here is where it gets messy.

Table

The NCAA has an easily searchable database for multi-year rate. For single-year rates. I was able to dig around by URL and find the following PDFs the NCAA publishes:

The schools are tied in single-year rate in 2023-24! So the next tiebreaker is 2022-23 single year rate, and FSU beats Auburn on that, 997 to 979. Technically, the multi-year rate for FSU is higher in 2023-24 anyway, at 990.5 compared to 989.75, but they both get rounded to 990.

Florida State’s climb in Academic Progress Rate in recent years has been one of the most impressive feats in FBS. They were dead last in FBS in multi-year APR in 2019, and they’ve now delivered 997s 2 years in a row, and it may land them a bowl game. If they end up getting a bowl for academic reasons, it represents a tremendous change in the program and hard work on their part, and would be a nice end to an interesting season.