What’s the future of bowl games? Bowl Season director talks impact of CFP, opt-outs and more
College football’s 41-game bowl schedule kicked off Dec. 13 with Washington beating Mountain West champion Boise State 38-10 at the LA Bowl. The game featured two widely known programs at SoFi Stadium, and Nielsen ratings data showed 4.1 million viewers tuned in.
But the six-day turnaround from selection to kickoff led to an announced crowd of 23,269. The LA Bowl is likely to expire after four games, which was first reported by On3’s Brett McMurphy. And the swirl of coaching news, player movement, teams declining bowl invitations and potential College Football Playoff expansion discussions dwarfed any discussion about the game’s outcome or any non-CFP result.
The bowls are in a precarious position in today’s college football. The CFP operates through them in the quarterfinals and semifinals, but the popularity of first-round on-campus matchups and potential CFP expansion to 16 teams, combined with player and team opt-outs, could lead to a further devaluation. But Bowl Season executive director Nick Carparelli sees coexistence between the bowls and a growing tournament through a transition era.
“We certainly have our issues that need to be resolved, but there’s probably not one issue that college athletics faces in general that doesn’t need to be reevaluated,” Carparelli said. “At this point in time, we’re going through a major transition in the sport, and we’re excited to talk to our conference partners once bowl season’s over to work with them to decide, what does bowl season need to look like in the future?”
Carparelli spoke with The Athletic on a number of bowl-related topics as the postseason takes root throughout holiday week. The first relates to how the bowls can survive alongside CFP expansion.
When the four-team College Football Playoff began in 2014, the sport’s hierarchy determined that 12 teams would comprise the upper-level New Year’s Six bowls. Then, when the CFP included all 12 teams, those six bowl games operated in the quarterfinals or semifinals, which changed little in the outside bowl system. However, more expansion takes away four teams from the upper tier of non-CFP bowls. How much will that detract from bowl games?
I think it’s inevitable that it goes to 16 — and I think it should be — but let’s get to a number that makes sense and stick with that for a period of time and really evaluate how that works for college football. I think anything beyond 16 seems a little far-fetched to most people. Sixteen is going to require every team who wants to win a championship to win four games. Even the NFL doesn’t play more than four postseason games. So, I think 16 is where we probably will end up, and the bowl system will adjust just fine.
There are still more than 16 teams in any given season that have earned the right to play in the postseason and to celebrate a successful season. Because let’s not forget, the definition of success is very different, depending on the football program.
After it was snubbed for a CFP spot, Notre Dame chose not to compete in a bowl game. Kansas State and Iowa State opted out after losing their head coaches and cited players’ injuries as a major concern. The bowl system already needed two transitional teams (Missouri State and Delaware) to fill all 82 bowl slots, then the dropouts forced a mad scramble among the bowls to land three 5-7 teams. In the current climate, are there too many bowl games?
The bowl system is a market-driven system. Through the 100 years of bowl games, no one has ever dictated how many bowl games there are. They’ve been strictly a function of host communities that want to host them and teams that want to participate.
If at any point in time, the institutions decide as much as we love the bowl system, we may want to participate at a different level, then the bowl system will adjust accordingly. But no one’s in a position to say what the number is, or to make any of those decisions. The market will dictate it.
Should the final number of bowl games adjust each year based on interest and availability? In 2021, a separate bowl game was set up in Frisco, Texas, to ensure every bowl-eligible team received a postseason destination.
I think it can, for sure. We’ve proven that can be the case. The problem is we go into each season guessing how many bowl-eligible teams there are and how many teams want a postseason opportunity. You get to the end of the year, and the odds are that the numbers aren’t going to match up exactly. I think that’ll be one of the discussion topics that we have with the conferences in the offseason. How do we accommodate all the teams that want to participate in the postseason without having to stress over the teams that don’t?
Bowl contracts expire after this cycle and the sport has changed more in that six-year stretch than at any other in college athletics history. There was a pandemic at the front end, sweeping changes allowing athletes to receive payment for services, a College Football Playoff that tripled in size and 45 FBS conference affiliation changes.
The bowls have stayed in place as the world has changed. Former Pac-12 teams in the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC remain under that league’s contract. Texas and Oklahoma are now part of the SEC’s alignment, which changes what teams the Big 12 can provide to its bowl partners. What can the bowl system prepare to do for the 2026-27 cycle, or does everything still hinge upon the CFP format?
Their conversations about college football’s postseason to this point has strictly revolved around the College Football Playoff. They need to make that decision first, and then they can move on to the rest of the bowl system. And we’re excited for that opportunity to talk to them about it.
Even though no decisions have been made, conversations have been ongoing between bowl games and their current conference partners, as well as some potential future conference partners. If the commissioners are to make a long-term decision on the CFP, then I think both the conferences and the bowl games would like to put long-term partnerships in place. But even at this late date, less than a year away from the 2026 bowl season, there’s still too many unknowns to make any definitive decisions.
All the bowl games that had a partnership with the former Pac-12 have had to juggle a lot the last couple of years, and I’m sure they would like to be out from under that arrangement as soon as possible.
Despite all of the chaos and public discourse over bowl games, there’s still an interest. Last year, nine bowl games picked up more than four million viewers, with BYU-Colorado hitting eight million in the Alamo Bowl, Iowa State-Miami picking up 6.79 million for the Pop-Tarts Bowl and Michigan-Alabama reaching 6.55 million in the ReliaQuest Bowl. Which bowls do you think have a chance to garner similar public interest?
I think the ReliaQuest Bowl (Vanderbilt-Iowa), for sure, is going to get a lot of eyeballs. You have two really motivated teams that have had successful seasons, even though they haven’t made the Playoff. And two teams that love playing football, which is something that gets lost in all of this, the opportunity to play one more game together as teammates is really valuable to those two teams.
The Pinstripe Bowl is an intriguing matchup. You have Clemson against Penn State, two teams that were in the preseason top 10 that a lot of people thought might meet in the Playoff that didn’t work out.
