A team is bowl eligible is it finishes its regular season 6-6 with one against a FCS program, regardless if the opponents meet the NCAA scholarship requirement.

Teams that finish 6-7, only because they lost a conference championship game.

6-7 if a team would normally play a 13-game schedule.

Former FCS teams in the second year of their two-year transition process to FBS competition if they go 6-6 or better.

If there are not enough bowl-eligible teams to fill all the bowls, teams that have a top-five Academic Progress Rate can become bowl eligible at 5-7. This rewards teams that have strict academics like Vanderbilt, Stanford or Northwestern.