NCAA denies GA Southern appeal to play in bowl game this year

Georgia Southern, Sun Belt champions (8-0), appealed to play in a bowl game this season but were denied by the NCAA since it's their first year at the FBS level and...you know, just because.

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Georgia Southern is classified as being in a transition season, moving up from the FCS last year to the FBS this season. Standard NCAA rules prohibit programs moving up a classification from playing in the postseason. It is not often a team playing its first year at the FBS reaches the six-win minimum for typical bowl eligibility. It is even more rare for a team to go undefeated in conference play to claim the outright conference championship in its first season. This is what Georgia Southern did this season, going 8-0 in conference play in the Sun Belt. The Sun Belt Conference recognizes Georgia Southern as the conference champion, but that is not enough to move the Eagles into the postseason.

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NBC Sports.

GA Southern also played Georgia Tech within 42-38 earlier this season.

GA Southern AD on why they appealed the rule: "Our whole basis for the waiver is if you really study the bowl process, there's been waivers written for numerous things throughout time — for teams that had losing records, waivers when there's not enough bowl eligible teams and other things. So when you start to look at that and the uniqueness of what we've done in our transition by becoming conference champions, going undefeated in the conference, we made an appeal basically saying does the uniqueness of our situation warrant at least a discussion of this?"