The Division I Football Oversight Committee on Thursday recommended that any FBS team playing football this season should be eligible to play in a bowl game, regardless of record, if it meets Academic Progress Rate requirements for postseason eligibility.
The Division I Council must still approve the measure and is scheduled to meet Oct. 13-14.
Teams are usually required to finish with a .500 overall record against FBS opponents, but the oversight committee wants to waive that requirement for the 2020-21 season because of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Providing a more flexible framework for the postseason in this unprecedented time will provide some certainty moving forward," Shane Lyons, West Virginia's athletic director and chair of the oversight committee, said in a statement. "These are important postseason opportunities for our student-athletes, and this will help everyone to prepare."
Nick Carparelli, executive director of the Football Bowl Association, previously told ESPN that flexibility was needed to fill the 82 spots in 41 scheduled bowl games. With the Big Ten and Pac-12 announcing they will play this fall, there will be no shortage of teams. The MAC and Mountain West might also vote to play at some point this fall.
Carparelli said the bowls wanted to "make this year more of a celebration of the sport and a reward for everybody just getting through these difficult times."
"There's such complexities to this year," Carparelli previously told ESPN, "especially with the conference-only schedules, and an uneven amount of games. Right now the conferences that are playing in the fall really want that bowl experience at the end, and the bowl games want to stage their games. That seems to be a solution that we're pushing right now."
ESPN's Heather Dinich contributed to this report.
