Western Kentucky has only been a division 1-A football program for 3 years in the Sun Belt Conference. In their first year they didn't win a game, an astounding 0-12. Last year they won only 2 games. It was an improvement from the year before, but hardly something to hang your hat on and definitely nowhere near bowl eligible. This season the Hilltoppers began the same way they had for the last 2 years, loosing 4 straight, but managed to save their season by winning 7 of their last 8 games and becoming bowl eligible. It is important to remember that bowl eligible doesn't mean that a team is guaranteed to go to a bowl game. Ultimately it is up to the bowl committees to determine who they invite to their bowls and the decision rarely has anything to do with being fair, much like the rest of division 1 football.
14 and 2, these numbers out of context don't mean anything to anyone. In the context of this bowl season they are unacceptable numbers for WKU. 14 teams that are going to bowl games this year have a worse record than the Hilltoppers. 14 teams without a winning record were rewarded for their play but WKU, which won 2 more games than it lost, has to watch less deserving teams play in a bowl game they should have been invited too. 2 of the teams that are less deserving are from the Sun Belt Conference and finished behind the Hilltoppers in the conference and were teams that they had beaten. How does something like this happen?
College football is as corrupt an organization as you will every see in which the corruption is rarely, if ever, called out. People will argue that the NCAA is fighting corruption within the programs across the country with sanctions and bans, but they aren't focusing on the corruption that screws more people and programs than anything else. The bowls still exist for one reason, money. Money has corrupted the college landscape so badly that San Diego State and Boise State just joined the Big East Conference. How can 2 teams on the western half of the country be in a conference called the Big East? The name of the conference doesn't matter anymore, it is simply what that conference can guarantee in revenue and bowl eligibility that determines where teams go. Over a hundred years of tradition have been craped on in the last 2 years, but the NCAA can't allow the one tradition the personifies college football to continue, paying players. I think they might have their priorities a little backwards. If the institutions are selling themselves for money then how can they expect he players not to?
In the case of WKU, the were replaced by teams in order to create "better match ups". That is a great code for better draws. I never heard of WKU before today, but I have heard of UCLA, Pitt, Arizona State and Ohio State. These teams finished the season with 6-6 record or worse but still went to a bowl ahead of WKU. Who would you rather watch is the question that bowl committee's ask to determine who gets the invites and WKU, though more deserving never got the nod. College football had 14 opportunities to do the right thing for WKU and failed all 14 times. Is it sad that we're no longer shocked by that?
Amen. The fact that two teams from the same conference with worse records got bowls is a travesty. But can't really count the Sun Belt the same as Big Ten and Pac 12.
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