Unprepared Bryson Daily Receives Heartbreaking News Right Before All-important Navy Game

The college football world was looking at an exciting independent bowl between Marshall and Army. The game was set to be played on December 28 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Usually, we see players looking to make the big leap to the NFL sitting out the bowl games. Then, there is the predicament of those who hit the transfer portal. For obvious reasons, they do not feature in the bowl games. However, this time, it’s an entire team that is looking to sit out a bowl game.

If the latest reports are to be believed, the Independence Bowl needs to find another team. Well, Marshall has withdrawn from the game against Bryson Daily’s Army. Yeah, you heard that right. What’s the reason? Well, the portal bug has caught Marshall, as the program does not have enough players to take the field against Army. As per 247Sports, as many as 29 players from the program have hit the transfer portal since December 8.

As per Brett McMurphy, “Marshall has withdrawn from playing Army in Independence Bowl because of number of players in transfer portal, sources said. The game is Dec 28. Because most players have left campus it may be tough to find a 5-7 team to replace Marshall.”

While it came out as a shocker, at least at a time when Marshall was freshly out of a Sunbelt title game barely a week ago and finished their season with 10-3; however, if you look at things a little closely, their head coach, Charles Huff, left the program to join Southern Miss as his deal ended.

As it’s a common trait in this sport. When a head coach leaves, his players also follow him. So, in this case, many of the Marshall players entered the portal as their HC left. Meanwhile, it won’t be a cakewalk to find a team replacing them at such short notice, as the game was scheduled for December 28th.

What are the rules for this case?

So here’s the deal with the Independence Bowl this year. They’ll have to find an opponent for Army—who’s already locked in as the American Athletic Conference champs and ranked No. 18 in the US LBM Coaches Poll. But here’s the catch: there are no more bowl-eligible teams left to pick from. So, the NCAA’s got a backup plan. They’re going to dig into the pool of 5-7 teams with the highest Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores because apparently, your grades can still get you into a bowl game, even if your win-loss record isn’t great.

The process is a little tricky but follows this flow: first, the NCAA places all the “deserving teams”—those that have met the requirements and earned a bowl spot—into whatever open bowls are left. Once they run out of those teams, they turn to the APR rankings, which list the 5-7 teams that have the highest scores. From there, if multiple bowl spots are still open, the top-ranked APR teams get the nod. For instance, if three teams with five wins are needed to fill three open-bowl spots, the three top APR teams are selected.

But here’s where it gets interesting. If a conference has a team in that APR pool and they’ve got a primary contract with a bowl that still has an open spot, that team gets first dibs. After that, the rest of the teams are placed through some back-and-forth between the conference, bowl partners, and the schools themselves.

What’s important to remember here is that the NCAA doesn’t control the final games. Those are up to the conferences and bowl organizers to figure out. So yeah, it’s all about APR scores and some behind-the-scenes decisions to fill those last-minute spots.