As the number of Division I college football bowl games has spiked to a record 40 this postseason, not enough teams have the six wins required to participate.

Inside Higher Ed reports.

Too Few Teams? Or Too Many Bowls?

If 2015’s were a typical college football season, Kansas State University’s hopes of competing in a bowl game would come to pass or be dashed by the end of Saturday’s game against the West Virginia University. It’s the last weekend of the regular season, and Kansas State is still one win away from being bowl eligible.

But this isn’t a typical season. Kansas State could lose Saturday’s game and still be eligible for a postseason bowl game, even with a losing record. So could a half-dozen other teams. There are currently only 75 bowl-eligible teams that can fill the 80 slots needed to complete the lineup for this year’s record-setting number of games, which has exploded in recent years.

The dearth of qualified teams led the National Collegiate Athletic Association this week to soften its requirements for playing in a bowl game. Usually, a team must have won six of a season’s 12 regular season games. Even if Kansas State, Georgia State University and the University of South Alabama were all to win games this weekend, that would put the number of eligible teams at 78.