If teams had to have winning records to go to bowls, we'd drop from 40 to 32 games this year

There are now 40 bowl games, plus the National Championship. That's a lot of football.

This overflow of football has meant the usual group of 6-6 teams aren't the worst teams to go bowling this year. This time, all of the 6-6 teams are in, plus some 5-7 teams. The idea of giving a trophy to a team that finishes 6-7 is a funny one, but everything about this sport is funny, so whatever.

In response to this, the ACC's voting to require 7-5 records for bowl eligibility, and we'll see if others follow.

If this rule had been in place this year (and actually enforced, since there's always a workaround for unfilled spots), we'd be without three 5-7 teams (Minnesota, Nebraska and San Jose State), who made it in thanks to a hastily arranged interpretation of an NCAA rule based on a suspect metric's assessment of academic performance by previous rosters at those programs, whether it was even the same coaching staff at the time or not. See? Funny sport.

We'd also be without 12 6-6 teams, slashing a total of 15 teams from the list. That would also mean an odd team out, so we'd be losing eight bowls entirely, with one 7-5 team sitting at home for the holidays.

So let's rearrange bowl season without those 15 teams, figure out who'd get snubbed, and pay respects to the eight bowls we'd no longer have among us.

A few things:

• Any bowls that lose both teams (the Cure Bowl loses 5-7 SJSU and 6-6 Georgia State and the Independence Bowl loses 6-6 Tulsa and 6-6 Virginia Tech, for example) is right out.
• Teams left without an opponent either get moved or welcome a fellow unmatched team. Let's say the bigger bowl or the bowl with the bigger conference tie does the welcoming. The other bowl departs.
• A couple (Air Force and Cal, for example) get split up thanks to spots opening elsewhere in their conferences.
• After sliding things around, poor Central Michigan gets left out at 7-5. CMU fans, please swap out any other team in your mind.

So here's the new list.

It's minus 15 non-winning teams, the snubbed CMU, and the Arizona, Armed Forces, Birmingham, Cure, Heart of Dallas, Independence, Quick Lane, and St. Petersburg bowls. We'd be back down to 32 bowls, not counting the National Championship, which is where we were in 2007.

This means eight fewer ugly trophies going out to happy players and coaches and 24 fewer hours of football for you to watch before the cold embrace of mid-January shuffles over you. I hope you're happy.