Edit: ok, now I’m 2nd guessing my 2nd guessing.
@cheekygeek in most seasons your logic would be right but the possible scenarios make it so it doesn’t matter.
@Old Nebraska Guy is right about Vanderbilt but I already posted that the APR teams with opponents 1 win from eligibility have to win.
Scenario 1: Vanderbilt, Baylor, and Purdue win (Baylor and Purdue have games against 5-win teams). No one else on the list wins. That means 74 bowl spots are taken by 6-win teams. Minnesota, KSU, and Air Force all lose and go to a bowl with 5 wins. That’s 77. Nebraska is the 78th bowl team.
Scenario 2: Same as 1 but Minnesota, KSU, and Air Force all win and go to a bowl with 6 wins. Nebraska is the 78th bowl team.
Scenario 3: Vanderbilt, Baylor, Purdue, and FSU win. No one else on the list wins. That means 75 bowl spots are taken by 6-win teams. Minnesota, KSU, and Air Force all lose and go to a bowl with 5 wins. That’s 78. Nebraska is left out.
Scenario 4: Same as 3 but Minnesota, KSU, and Air Force all win and go to a bowl with 6 wins. Nebraska is left out.
Scenario 5: Vanderbilt loses. Nebraska is out.
In these scenarios it doesn’t matter whether the 5-win APR team won their game except the one that I mentioned previously and
@Old Nebraska Guy just mentioned; a 5-win APR team needs to win if their opponent is 1 win from bowl eligibility.
In another season where we don’t need only 2 teams to win and there isn’t only 1 spot available, I think your logic works. We would need Minnesota, KSU, and Air Force to win
instead of 3 other teams. But that doesn’t work because 2 of those teams are already guaranteed to win (Baylor or TTech, Purdue or Indiana) and there is no more room for error for your logic to apply here.
You’ve said if 3 teams on the final list win we’re out. If only 2 on the final list win we’re in regardless of what the 5-win APR teams do other than Vanderbilt which I already mentioned when I was talking about their opponents like 5 posts ago.