What they announced today is this"
The papajohn.com bowl and the St. Petersburg Bowl. along with the Independence Bowl have contingency agreements with the Belt for the next two years.
This means if the bowls are unable to fill their contractual agreements with the SEC, Big XII, Big East or CUSA because they don't have enough bowl eligible teams, then taking a 7-5 SBC team becomes their first priority before looking anywhere else.
It seems that every year the big conferences have trouble filling all their slots, especially if they have two schools in BCS bowls.
While this does not guarantee a second bowl appearance as a bowl tie in would, it does make it more likely that what happened to Troy last year doesn't happen again.
The other good news is that the bowls are regional for our schools, making it easier for our fans, rather than trying to get Troy into the Silicon Valley Bowl or Middle into the Motor City Bowl
It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than what we had.