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Quickly, before getting into the bowl games, I'm disappointed that the Catholic 7 will not officially adopt that name. It sounds kind of cool and even a little shady; they should stick with it. Their divisions could be called Torquemada and Savonarola, and their championship game could be for the soul of the conference. It also clearly doesn't matter how many members are actually a part of a conference since the numbers are not indicative of their true value, rather something that just sounds good together.
They also announced that teams who are 6-6, and are playing in their conference championship, may be eligible for a bowl game...even if they lose. As if there aren't enough bowl games watering down the post-season, now the NCAA is willing to make it even easier for teams from crappy conferences to play in a bowl game. Ho-lee shit. I love the Wolverines, but I would hate to see them in a bowl game with a losing record and playing against Whogivesashit State in the That Liquor Store on the Corner Bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah, extra practices for the young kids; I get it. But why reward teams for losing in the conference championship just because it's the conference championship? It would be better to just get rid of the bowls (and the post-season) all together and give everyone a ribbon for playing.
Prior to this change, one of the ways for a 6-7 team to get a bowl was "if" there were more bowls than qualified teams. If. There were 34 bowls played in 2012-2013. In 1982-1983 there were 16, and in '92-'93 there were 18. I remember watching bowl games as a kid and being excited to watch the few that were on television, wishing there could be more. As I've gotten older I've realized that the NCAA has proven that more is just more...not better.
Like Salieri in Amadeus, the NCAA has become the patron saint of mediocrity; their new slogan should be the movie line, "Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you."