2016–17 NCAA football bowl games

The 2016–17 NCAA football bowl games are a series of college football bowl games which will complete the 2016 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The games will begin in late December 2016 and aside from the all-star games will end with the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship which will be played on January 9, 2017.

Schedule

The schedule for the 2016–17 bowl games is below. All times are EST (UTC−5).

College Football Playoff and Championship Game

The College Football Playoff system will, again, be used to determine a national champion of Division I FBS college football. A 13-member committee of experts will rank the top 25 teams in the nation after each of the last seven weeks of the 2015 season. The top four teams in the final ranking will play a single-elimination semifinal round, with the winners advancing to the National Championship game.

The semi-final games will be held at the Fiesta Bowl and the Peach Bowl as part of a yearly rotation of six bowls. Their winners will advance to the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida on January 9, 2017. As with the 2015 season, the two semi-final bowls will be held on New Year's Eve (Saturday, December 31, 2016), as the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl are guaranteed exclusive TV time slots on January 2 (if New Year's Day falls on a Sunday, the legal New Year's Day holiday is observed on the following Monday, and there is a gentleman's agreement to not play the New Year's Day bowl games against NFL games, which are played as usual when New Year's Day falls on a Sunday),^[1] regardless of whether they will be hosting a semifinal game.^[2]^[3]^[4]

To reduce the impact of the semi-final games' New Year's Eve scheduling—a factor that led to lower viewership of the 2015 semi-finals in comparison to 2014, it was announced on March 8, 2016 that the kickoff times of the two bowls would be pushed forward to 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. ET. CFP commissioner Bill Hancock suggested that starting the games earlier would allow viewers to partake in both the CFP games and New Year's festivities. He also noted that Saturday was traditionally associated with college football, but reiterated that—outside of years when the semi-finals are hosted by the Rose and Sugar Bowls—that the semi-final games will not be moved from New Year's Eve. As the earlier start intrudes the early afternoon window for New Year's Six games, the 2016 Orange Bowl will instead be held as a primetime game on December 30, 2016. As a result, the "New Year's Six" bowls will be stretched across a period of four days, rather than two consecutive days of three games each.^[4]^[5]

Date	Game	Site	Television	Radio	Affiliations
Dec. 30	Capital One Orange Bowl	Sun Life Stadium Miami Gardens, FL	ESPN	ESPN Radio
Dec. 31	BattleFrog Fiesta Bowl (Playoff semifinal game)	University of Phoenix Stadium Glendale, AZ 3:00 p.m. or 7:00 p.m.
Dec. 31	Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl (Playoff semifinal game)	Georgia Dome Atlanta, GA 3:00 p.m. or 7:00 p.m.
Jan. 2	Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic	AT&T Stadium Arlington, TX
	Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual	Rose Bowl Pasadena, CA			Big Ten Pac-12
	Allstate Sugar Bowl	Mercedes-Benz Superdome New Orleans, LA			SEC Big 12
Jan. 9	College Football Playoff National Championship (Fiesta Bowl winner vs. Peach Bowl winner)	Raymond James Stadium Tampa, FL

Non-CFP bowl games

On April 11, 2016, the NCAA announced a freeze on new bowl games until after the 2019 season. The NCAA plans to revise its postseason eligibility criteria in the aftermath of the 2015 season, where a record three teams with losing records (5–7) were allowed to participate in bowls due to there being not enough bowl-eligible teams, and the inaugural Arizona Bowl had to be played between two Mountain West teams due to the lack of eligible teams to meet its other tie-ins.^[6]^[7]^[8]

Prior to the moratorium, multiple new bowl games were proposed for or approved to begin play in 2016, including one in Myrtle Beach, the Medal of Honor Bowl (which planned to convert itself from an all-star game to a sanctioned bowl after the NCAA lifted its ban on postseason championships in South Carolina),^[9] the Sun Belt/AAC Austin Bowl.^[10]^[8] and a Mountain West/Pac-12 bowl in Melbourne, Australia.^[11]^[12]^[13]

All-star games

Date	Game	Site	Television	Participants	Results
Jan. 21	East–West Shrine Game	Tropicana Field St. Petersburg, FL 4:00 pm	NFL Network	East Team West Team	TBD
Jan. 21	NFLPA Collegiate Bowl	StubHub Center Carson, CA 6:00pm	ESPN2	National Team American Team	TBD
Jan. 28	Senior Bowl	Ladd–Peebles Stadium Mobile, AL 2:30pm	NFL Network	North Team South Team	TBD

Selection of the teams

Bowl-eligible teams

Number of bowl berths available:
Number of bowl-eligible teams:

Bowl-ineligible teams

Number of bowl-ineligible teams:

References

↑ "Blues could host Blackhawks in 2017 Winter Classic". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
↑ "A daunting task: Can the CFP, ESPN change old New Year's Eve habits?". Sports Illustrated. Time Inc. July 2, 2015. Retrieved 6 July 2015.
↑ "College Football Playoff 101", ESPN, May 19, 2014. Retrieved May 6, 2015.
1 2 "Orange Bowl game is shifted to prime time on Dec. 30". Miami Herald. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
↑ "The 2017 College Football Playoff will still be on New Year’s Eve, but it’ll start earlier". SB Nation. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
↑ "Nebraska, Minnesota, San Jose St. taking 5-7 records to bowl". NCAA.com. Retrieved 18 December 2015.
↑ "NCAA approves three-year halt to new bowl games". ESPN.com. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
1 2 "NCAA moratorium means no bowl game for Myrtle Beach, for now". Myrtle Beach Online. Associated Press. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
↑ Hartsell, Jeff (August 27, 2015). "Medal of Honor Bowl now a 'traditional' bowl game". The Post and Courier. Retrieved August 29, 2015.
↑ "Austin's bowl game hopes delayed to 2016". Austin Business Journal. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
↑ "Etihad Stadium boss Paul Sergeant tips Australian college bowl to be a sellout". Fox Sports (AU). Fox Sports Pty Limited.
↑ "Melbourne Bowl 2016: Australia Set to Host Matchup Between Pac-12 and MWC". Bleacher Report. Turner Sports. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
↑ "Australia Bowl: Organizer 'good to go' for 2016 game between Mountain West, Pac-12". MWConnection (SB Nation). Vox Media. Retrieved 9 March 2016.

2016 NCAA Division I FBS football season

Conference seasons	The American ACC Big 12 Big Ten Conference USA MAC Mountain West Pac-12 SEC Sun Belt

Inter-conference	Bowl games Rankings

All-Americans	2016 College Football All-America Team

NCAA football bowl seasons

1934–35
1935–36
1936–37
1937–38
1938–39
1939–40
1940–41
1941–42
1942–43
1943–44
1944–45
1945–46
1946–47
1947–48
1948–49
1949–50
1950–51
1951–52
1952–53
1953–54
1954–55
1955–56
1956–57
1957–58
1958–59
1959–60
1960–61
1961–62
1962–63
1963–64
1964–65
1965–66
1966–67
1967–68
1968–69
1969–70
1970–71
1971–72
1972–73
1973–74
1974–75
1975–76
1976–77
1977–78
1978–79
1979–80
1980–81
1981–82
1982–83
1983–84
1984–85
1985–86
1986–87
1987–88
1988–89
1989–90
1990–91
1991–92
1992–93
1993–94
1994–95
1995–96
1996–97
1997–98
1998–99
1999–00
2000–01
2001–02
2002–03
2003–04
2004–05
2005–06
2006–07
2007–08
2008–09
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12
2012–13
2013–14
2014–15
2015–16
2016–17

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, April 29, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.