meaning that 78 teams will be selected to play in bowl games. Last year there were 79 teams (plus Penn State) that were bowl-eligible meaning all but 2 ended up participating.

Looking just at the "Power 5" conference and new conference affiliations, here's how it would break down:

- The ACC has 11 teams that finished bowl-eligible last year (12 including Notre Dame). They have 8 guaranteed bowl tie-ins along with 3 additional tie-ins shared with the Big Ten. There probably won't be any openings there.
- The Big 12 has 6 teams that finished bowl-eligible last year. They have 6 guaranteed bowl tie-ins along with 1 additional tie-in shared with the Big 12. If a Big 12 teams gets selected as an at-large for one of the major bowl-games then it could very well open a spot here.
- The Big Ten has 10 teams that finished bowl-eligible last year. They have 6 guaranteed bowl tie-ins along with 5 additional tie-ins shared with the Big 12, ACC, and SEC. There probably won't be an open spot here.
- The Pac-12 has 9 teams that finished bowl-eligible last year. They have 9 guaranteed bowl tie-ins. If they get a team selected as an at-large for one of the major bowl-games then it could very well open a spot here as well.
-The SEC has 9 teams that finished bowl-eligible last year. They have 10 guaranteed bowl tie-ins with 1 additional tie-in shared with the Big Ten. When also considering they're likely to get 1 or even 2 at-large bids for the major bowls it's almost guaranteed there will be open spots here.

To recap - there are 44 spots reserved for the "Power 5" conference teams plus an additional 5 at-large spots in the major bowls that will likely go to "Power 5" conference teams. This means that they would need 49 bowl-eligible teams among them to fill all of those spots. Last year they had 46 bowl-eligible teams among them meaning there should be a few spots open for a team like BYU to get as an at-large.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that BYU ends up replacing the Pac-12 in the Christmas Bowl this next year playing an MWC team.