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John Raoux/Associated Press

Rather than peppering it throughout the tiers, let's address all the bowl math in one spot.

Excluding the national championship game, there are 39 bowls, which means we need 78 teams. There are already 71 bowl-eligible teams, and 22 others are one win away from securing eligibility.

Moreover, three games this coming week (Baylor at Texas Tech, Purdue at Indiana and Tennessee at Vanderbilt) pit 5-6 teams against one another. Since we know three of those teams will get to six wins and three of them will not, it's fair to say there are 74 bowl-eligible teams with 16 others one win away.

Most of those teams will be underdogs in Week 13, but we project four of them to win: Tulane vs. Navy, Florida Atlantic vs. Charlotte, Southern Miss at UTEP and Miami-Ohio vs. Ball State.

If those four teams win and the other 12 five-win teams all lose, there won't be any drama. Every team with at least six wins would go to a bowl game, and we wouldn't need to worry about Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores among the 5-7 squads.

If more five-win teams win than expected—especially if those teams are Florida State (vs. Florida), USC (vs. Notre Dame) or other power-conference programs—we're going to see six-win Group of Five teams left out.

If there aren't enough six-win teams and we do end up needing to go to the APR scores, the ranking among teams that could end the season at 5-7 is, in descending order: Vanderbilt or Air Force (same score), Illinois, Kansas State, Minnesota and Maryland.

One wild card to keep in mind: Virginia Tech (4-6) had a game canceled earlier this season due to Hurricane Florence. If the Hokies defeat Virginia this weekend, they could still schedule an "emergency" game during conference championship week to try to get that sixth win, just like Florida State did last year. Southern Miss (5-5) also had a game canceled and might be willing to play a do-or-die game against the Hokies if it were to lose to UTEP this week.

Akron (4-6) also had a game canceled and has already scheduled a Week 14 game against South Carolina. It's mathematically possible for the Zips to sneak into the bowl picture, but they would need to win road games against Ohio and South Carolina. According to ESPN's FPI metrics, there's only a 0.3 percent chance that happens.