Bowl record by conference
Conference	Bowls	Record	Final AP Poll
Big Ten	10	4–6 (0.400)	4
SEC	9	6–3 (0.667)	5
ACC	8	2–6 (0.250)	3
Big 12	8	6–2 (0.750)	4
Pac-12	7	2–5 (0.286)	3
Big East	5	3–2 (0.600)	2
Conference USA	5	4–1 (0.800)	2
MAC	5	4–1 (0.800)	0
Mountain West	5	2–3 (0.400)	2
Sun Belt	3	1–2 (0.333)	0
WAC	3	0–3 (0.000)	0
Independents	2	1–1 (0.500)	0

Bowl record by conference
Conference	Bowls	Record	Final AP Poll
Big Ten	10	4–6 (0.400)	4
SEC	9	6–3 (0.667)	5
ACC	8	2–6 (0.250)	3
Big 12	8	6–2 (0.750)	4
Pac-12	7	2–5 (0.286)	3
Big East	5	3–2 (0.600)	2
Conference USA	5	4–1 (0.800)	2
MAC	5	4–1 (0.800)	0
Mountain West	5	2–3 (0.400)	2
Sun Belt	3	1–2 (0.333)	0
WAC	3	0–3 (0.000)	0
Independents	2	1–1 (0.500)	0

The 2011–12 NCAA football bowl games were a series of college football bowl games. They concluded the 2011 NCAA Division I FBS football season, and included 35 team-competitive games and five all-star games. The games began on December 17, 2011 and, aside from the all-star games, concluded with the 2012 BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans, that was played on January 9, 2012.

The total of 35 team-competitive bowls was unchanged from the previous year. While bowl games had been the purview of only the very best teams for nearly a century, this was the sixth consecutive year that teams with non-winning seasons participated in bowl games. To fill the 70 available team-competitive bowl slots, a total of 14 teams (20% of all participants) with non-winning seasons participated in bowl games—13 had a .500 (6-6) season and, for the first time ever, a team with a sub-.500 (6-7) season was invited to a bowl game.

In the previous year's bowl cycle, the NCAA scrapped a bylaw which mandated that a school with a non-losing record of 6–6 in regular season play were not eligible unless conferences could not fill out available bowl positions with teams with a winning record of seven (or more) wins. The new rule was stretched further in this 2011-12 bowl season when a team with a losing record, the 6-7 UCLA Bruins, were invited to a bowl game. The Bruins, the Pac-12 South Division winners, finished 6-6 but the USC Trojans (10–2), winners of the division, were barred from postseason play because of the University of Southern California athletics scandal of the mid-2000s, and the resulting two-year ban. The conference and the school applied for a waiver, which the NCAA accepted, based on their bowl eligibility after the sixth win, but having to play in an unmerited conference championship game.

This interpretation of policy ultimately led to Western Kentucky, with a 7-5 winning record, or Ball State, with a 6-6 non-losing record, going uninvited.

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