[h1]Why Louisiana Tech is staying home despite a 9-3 record[/h1]
12:19AM EST December 3. 2012 - Louisiana Tech is 9-3, has the nation's highest-scoring offense, was once viewed as a potential BCS buster and is not playing in a bowl game.
But the Bulldogs aren't staying home from bowl play because of an unwillingness to play in-state rival Louisiana-Monroe in the Independence Bowl, Louisiana Tech athletic director Bruce Van De Velde told USA TODAY Sports.
In what he called a "late development," the Bulldogs were squeezed out of bowl play as a result of Northern Illinois' leap into the Orange Bowl, the WAC's disintegration and the Independence Bowl's own timeline, which forced Louisiana Tech to make a decision on its postseason plans ahead of schedule.
Van De Velde said that the Independence Bowl issued an invitation to the Bulldogs late on Friday night. In response, the university told the bowl's selection committee that it needed more time to vet the postseason opportunities still on its plate.
Van De Velde said he received a call from Missy Setters, the executive director of the Independence Bowl, on Saturday during halftime of the Oklahoma-TCU game. Setters told Van De Velde that the bowl needed an immediate decision. Van De Velde told Setters that he was still waiting on other opportunities, and that he wouldn't know how the Liberty Bowl and Heart of Dallas Bowl would go until Sunday. Setters replied that if Louisiana Tech wasn't ready to move on Saturday afternoon, the Independence Bowl would take a MAC team – Ohio.
"We had played there in 2008, and the sponsor is a graduate of Louisiana Tech, so I thought they would wait for us," Van De Velde said. "We all agreed we wanted to wait, so we said to them, 'We don't want to turn it down, but we need time to see how this plays out.' "
Waiting cost Louisiana Tech its spot. "They chose to go in another direction," Van De Velde said, rather than wait to see if the Bulldogs chose to play its bowl game in Shreveport.
"We never declined" the bid, Van De Velde said. "We just asked for more time. They felt like they had to move, and I understand. But we felt like we needed time to see how this played out."
Forty teams with records worse than Louisiana Tech accepted bowl bids this season. Ten out of 35 bowl games will include teams with .500 records or worse.
In a perfect world, Van De Velde said, the team would have either gone to the Liberty Bowl or the Heart of Dallas Bowl – the former against Tulsa, the Conference USA champs, and the latter on Jan. 1. The Bulldogs have never played in a January bowl, so the Heart of Dallas Bowl held some appeal. On Sunday, Northern Illinois' BCS berth also shoved the Bulldogs out of both the Liberty Bowl and the Heart of Dallas Bowl.
"We were pretty sure we were headed to the Liberty Bowl or the Heart of Dallas Bowl, but what happened was Northern Illinois moved up to the top 16, and that caused a domino effect that knocked Oklahoma out of the Sugar Bowl," Van De Velde said.
"We thought that if Kent State got beat Friday night, and Oklahoma and Kansas State won, the Big 12 would get two into the BCS and we'd be playing on New Year's Day or in the Liberty Bowl. The Heart of Dallas then filled, and then the Big 12 had an extra bowl-eligible team, and the Liberty Bowl chose them (Iowa State) over us."
Louisiana Tech's avenues for postseason play were also limited by the WAC's dearth of bowl tie-ins. The conference, which is in its last season of existence as a football league on the FBS level, has only one official bowl tie-in, to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl; that bid went to Utah State, the WAC champions. The second-place team, San Jose State, will meet Bowling Green in the Military Bowl on Dec. 27.
"What hurt us is that we're in a conference that's disintegrating," Van De Velde said. "It only has one bowl tie-in. We weren't the champions, Utah State was, and they got that tie-in. Next year, we won't have that issue, because we're going into Conference USA and they have five bowl tie-ins."
As a result of all three factors – the Independence Bowl's timeline, Northern Illinois' BCS run and the WAC's lack of tie-ins – a nine-win team is staying home from bowl play.
"It's just an unfortunate situation that in this particular year, we got caught," Van De Velde said.
