Bowl eligibility in college football at the NCAA Division I FBS level is the standard through which teams become available for selection to participate in postseason bowl games. When a team achieves this state, it is described as "bowl-eligible". For nearly a century, bowl games were the purview of only the very best teams, but a steady proliferation of new bowl games required 70 participating teams by the 2010–11 bowl season, then 80 participating teams by the 2015–16 bowl season. As a result, the NCAA has steadily watered down the criteria for bowl eligibility in favor of higher profits, allowing teams with a non-winning (6–6) record in 2010, further reducing to allow teams with outright losing records (5–7) to be invited by 2012. For the 2016–17 bowl season, 25% of the bowl participants (20 teams) did not have a winning record. Current regulations have also adjusted the criteria to allow a team to include one win against teams at the lower FCS level. Teams that are bowl eligible will usually either play in one of the bowl games that its conference is affiliated with based on conference tie-ins or the team will be chosen from the pool of remaining bowl eligible teams to fill one of the at-large positions. The various reductions in the bowl eligibility criteria are discussed below. Current criteria In mid-October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA waived bowl eligibility requirements for the 2020–21 bowl season, intended "to allow as many student-athletes as possible the opportunity to participate in bowl games this year." Past criteria For the 2018–19 bowl season, a team was required to meet the following criteria to participate in a bowl game: The team must have at least as many wins as overall losses. Wins against non-Division I teams do not count toward the number of wins. No more than one win against an FCS team may count toward that win total, and only if the FCS team has awarded at least 90% of the scholarships that FCS rules allowed it to award over the last two years. (Currently, that means that wins against Ivy League, Georgetown, Pioneer Football League, and some Northeast Conference teams do not count.) The requirement that the FCS team must have awarded 90% of its allowed scholarships may be waived if a "unique or catastrophic situation" prevented the FCS team from meeting that requirement. A team that has