You probably shouldn’t listen to me if you enjoy bowl games. For years, I’ve been pushing the narrative that the bowl games are slowly becoming obsolete and that college football needs to do something about it. Now, things are accelerating far more quickly as we zoom towards the 12-team playoff era and I don’t see a future worth preserving for most of the bowl games.
Unfortunately, the sport remains permanently hitched to television ratings. When last year’s Wednesday afternoon Military Bowl between Duke and UCF picks up 2.16 million viewers how do you explain to ESPN that a standard airing of NBA Today with 15% of that football game viewership is better for them? You can’t, money wins always.
Each team received a $2 million payout for that Military Bowl game too as fewer than 18,000 people watched from the stands inside the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. The actual product being offered doesn’t seem to matter, although it seems as NIL and the transfer portal radically redefine the sport, this could be changing for many fans.
It’s not bad for all of the bowl games. Remember, next year the 12-team playoff begins and the major bowl games will be absorbed into that new system. Using this year’s final playoff rankings the system starting next year would look like this:
*We’ll go chalk just for this example.
Quarterfinals
Oregon vs. Michigan (Orange Bowl)
Florida State vs. Alabama (Peach Bowl) 🙂 🙂 🙂
Georgia vs. Texas (Cotton Bowl)
Ohio State vs. Washington (Fiesta Bowl)
Semifinals
Alabama vs. Michigan (Rose Bowl)
Washington vs. Texas (Sugar Bowl)
Now, the sport gets to double dip on the best teams with the best bowl games. How excited must the Fiesta Bowl committee be not to host Liberty (assuming they lose in the first round of the playoffs) and how cool for these bowl games to host 2 whole rounds of playoff games. The major bowl executives–people with an insane grip on this sport for decades–were able to navigate all this chaos and get their share of the gold.
But what about the other bowl games?
The future of the sport should be headed in any or all of these ways:
Disassociate the Bowls from the Playoff
At first glance, this is the easiest decision. However, the odds of this happening have to be so low that I would be absolutely floored if it were ever to happen. There’s no way the major bowl executives would give up all of this money and high quality matchups. I think we’ll see a future with a star quarterback making $8 million a year to play at Georgia, or academic eligibility ceases to exists, before the Fiesta and Rose bowls voluntarily accept less money and worst football games in order to prop up the wider bowl system.
Plus, I’m not sure this fixes the problem that we are trying to address in that the 12-team playoff has created an even bigger haves vs. have nots for the future and not making the playoffs will make teams, players, and coaches even more irrelevant to the post-season.
For example, I’m sure Notre Dame would enjoy playing in the Cotton Bowl against Oregon State later this month instead of the Sun Bowl. That’s a win all around for the Irish. But, will anyone care if Notre Dame beats Oregon State’s 3rd string quarterback and a bunch of backups in a “major” bowl game that is no longer really considered a major bowl game?
Drop the Conference Bowl Tie-Ins
If you look at the first tier of teams who would’ve been left out of the 12-team playoff in this 2023 scenario they still have some decent matchups this year. Yet, there’s no reason that LSU should be forced to play 5-loss Wisconsin because these dumb conferences line things up a certain way.
Notre Dame vs. Oregon State is a really good matchup (#16 vs. #19) but there’s no reason the game should’ve been demoted all the way to the Sun Bowl except for the insane way the sport goes about picking and choosing these things.
Something needs to happen where the best teams are playing each other outside of the playoffs and that means dropping the conference tie-ins which handcuff an already handcuffed post-season.
The Nuclear (but Better) Option
There doesn’t seem to be much hope for the non-major bowl games now and in the immediate future. The transfer portal has created a proper mess of the situation as players scramble to find a new home leaving their previous school with a shortened bench and less talented roster for bowl games. Coaching staff’s all over the nation are currently on the move, too. More and more opt outs for the NFL keep coming up, as well.
Think about how quickly the timeline has sped up for finding a grad transfer quarterback. At this time last year there were only rumors about Sam Hartman and a possible move to Notre Dame or elsewhere for a 6th year of eligibility. At this point last year, we were still 12 days away from Hartman still needing to play in a bowl game, 16 days away from him officially entering the portal, and 25 days away from him actually choosing the Irish.
Only college football would conduct its offseason and postseason simultaneously.
And next year, it gets worse.
On a sport’s broken calendar, the limited solutions and how we got here. https://t.co/5LeCT6INDf
— David Ubben (@davidubben) December 5, 2023
Today, people are freaking out that quarterback Riley Leonard hasn’t committed to Notre Dame yet. He’s probably committing today anyway, but the 12 days since he’s entered the portal have taken up so much of the Irish football bandwidth with the Sun Bowl taking a backseat.
I know that schools want the money and people will watch football no matter what is put in front of them. But the post-season interest is appreciably dropping, isn’t it? And if that isn’t dropping by much isn’t the meaning of post-season games by far the lowest its ever been and its not even comparable to any other era in college football history?
I think I’d be happier without a bowl game and that feels exceedingly normal to say out loud.
If some of the best players aren’t participating, more coaching staff’s are moving on or fired, a bunch of other guys on the team are banged up and injured, then why play an exhibition game? We went from “only the elite of the elite guys should sit out, transfers will happen after the post-season, and bowl games were still really competitive” viewpoints to an understanding and acceptance that rosters are a shell of themselves while middle tier bowl games and below are nearly pointless and more of a burden.
This excessive change to norms all happened within the span of 5 years or less.
Here’s a post-season timeline I’d be more interested in following:
- Reduce the weekly amount of practice time from 20 to 10 hours per week for 4 weeks.
- All practices are open to the first x amount of arriving fans, media, and guests.
- Informal practices are streamed with in-house University students providing commentary and live interviews.
- During practices, free team-issued gear and other gifts are given out to select people in attendance.
- The last hour of each Friday practice is devoted to a skills competition rotating through each position group every week.
Even if parts of this are cheesy I feel like it’s healthier for the players who are staying on campus and committed to the football team, their bodies can heal, all while the program moves away from a bunch of closed off and secretive practice for a game that no one really wants to happen. It would be pretty cool if Notre Dame was the first school to do this, and if they didn’t want to, well then just make the playoffs.
Media money as with conference contraction as well as revenue to the communities of the bowls drives their continued existence. Conference tie-ins restrict the competitive matchups that we’ll see in the Sun Bowl. One caveat in the analysis below
College Football Playoff Payouts 2023-2024
In the future, will we see players, who do not intend to enter the draft, insisting that their bowl participation is contingent on being paid? As we know, the BIG universities get $100 mill a year from their media contract.
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While I agree that college football’s December has become jammed with too much activity I’ll always watch the Irish play another team, regardless of the shape of the rosters or staffs.
Watching practice isn’t like watching football. What you described might be interesting if I lived in South Bend but I’m definitely not traveling for it and it’ll be less compelling than the spring game which is just okay.
What did these bowl games ever do to you??? 😉
The bowls turned into Angeli vs. Gulbranson matchups neither who will (likely) ever have a future at their schools what are we even doing!???
I will still gladly watch this!
What I would prefer is if they are officially considered scrimmages, no stats or win/loss are official. Basically taking away the one slight thing that still almost matters. And make it truly a glorified practice for the next season. While still letting us watch something a bit more competitive than the Blue/Gold game.
I would watch an ND vs OSU scrimmage 12 times a year as long as it isn’t on the PAC12 network.
Not even going to keep score!
I’d like keeping score as it just makes the flow of watching better. But on the who is “winning” level, I don’t actually care. I just want to see if there is anyone flashes that might have a big year next year.
Pretty accurate, juice, with some benefit for 2024, a reward for players, a bit of fun, charity events. OSU’s Gulbranson is backed up by a walkon QB and their top RB is suspended and will not be going.
Wisconsin faces LSU with their starter a RS Sr and Freshman backups. LSU will be missing their opt outs for the NFL. Badger fan base loves to travel especially to a sunny location for a bowl.
We could pay the players now. Let the university take their cut for getting the team to the game. Take the rest of the payout and divide it up ratably among the players. Perhaps 25K or whatever keeps some players from opting out. Makes the game better.
or transferring. You wonder if some players who opt to stay with a program enter the Portal to get more NIL money. They could have more leverage in a program that has a new coach faced with an exodus of players.
That’s not a bad idea.
But ND’s $4.5 million payout for the Sun Bowl needs to cover costs for University employees and admin to enjoy the trip too! The school might argue a hoodie, Frosted Flakes travel-sized 12-pack, and $100 Best Buy gift card should be more than enough incentive to attend from their bowl swag bag.
In the administration’s defense, if you open the boxes via the perforations, the box ALSO becomes a bowl. So not only are the student-athletes getting cereal, they’re also getting dishware.
The high life.
I was deducting that, but perhaps a simple $1MM or so to the players. Divided 85 ways that is only $12K, so maybe you need more. Add that to the lifetime supply of Frosted Flakes and you are talking real money.
The ND bowl money goes to the University which has used it for funding things that benefit all students like the library, etc. Dillon Hall was built with the revenue from the 1925 Rose Bowl. The University since Rockne’s time has opposed football revenue going solely to Athletic Department. Swag is limited to $550 in products.
That suggestion may work for the BIG or SEC teams. Some think that the future is for players becoming employees of the universities. I wonder how the faculty might respond if football players are being paid more than them.
The players and faculty can line up and see which side has the larger NBC and media right deal bringing in tens of millions for the school 🙂
The math department obviously brings in the largest media deal.
I’d love to see the IRS tell the BIGee universities like Michigan that football can no longer be classified under the universities’ non-profit status. Call it what it has become. A for-profit football program separate from the university like that would be a conference decision since those have surrendered their autonomy and have a media contract they all signed on to. The price of admission.
I don’t understand why you would want to take away football. If you don’t enjoy the bowl games, couldn’t you just not watch? Not calling Eric out specifically; I’ve seen this argument made many times, and I’ve never quite understood the downside to just keeping the games for the millions of people who do enjoy them.
I do, however, have a proposal that builds off of the proposal here to drop conference affiliations: fully allow the schools to schedule their postseason matchups if they don’t make the playoff, and allow the schools to decide where to play. ND and Iowa both miss the playoff this year? The ADs make an agreement to play a home and home, with this year at ND, and the next time both miss the playoff at Iowa. Or both agree to just play this year, but in San Antonio (or whatever city wants to pay them a ton of money to play there).
Because I care about the integrity of the sport.
I don’t know, is it really that weird?
I come at this from writing and covering the team perspective. Is anyone looking forward to the Sun Bowl preview article? What do I write? What will people find interesting?
Half our team is missing. So too, Oregon State’s. Their coach and most of their coaching staff is gone. If anyone plays well, there will be asterisks. If anyone plays poorly there will be asterisks. Does the game mean anything? Maybe something…but not much. The 2023 team as we know it is gone and the bowl won’t have much of a bearing at all on 2024.
It just seems so damn silly.
How low does it have to go? Does the product just not matter at all? It seems like for many people nope, it doesn’t. I’m the one finding that weirder and weirder each year!
the integrity of the sport? Historical norms have become just that – except for bowls matching G5 teams who play in those minor bowls.
Those G5 teams may be more intact, and appreciative of the opportunities for the competition. The alumni get excited. The best coaches and top players may have been poached, but their players’ NIL revenue is minimal in comparison which to me means they play for the love of the game and a bit of swag.
Better to ax the major conferences’ second tier of bowls. ND should lead the way in cutting their bowl tie-in. That’s what independence status allows you to do.
This is pretty far down my list on the things impacting the integrity of the sport:
-The #1 team in the country’s coach was suspended for half their games this year, for multiple reasons.
-The #4 team in the country made the playoff over an undefeated P5 Conference Champion, after only beating Auburn on a 4th and 31 Hail Mary the week after Auburn lost to New Mexico State by multiple scores.
(Also in regards to the question “does the product just not matter” – I attended ND during the worst 4 year stretch in program history and still went to every game, so I might have a flawed view of what is a good vs. bad product!)
That was in italics I was (mostly) joking!
I just continue to marvel at how we obsess about so much around ND football with all these big and small things over scheduling, coaching, scheme, recruiting, media, etc. and when bowl season rolls around in the current format it’s like, “Don’t care, I just want to watch football.”
Lol oh I thought you were emphasizing that point, not goofing.
To your point here, yes, I don’t care, just want to watch football, and also I will likely curse Steve Angeli’s name if we don’t win by 30. It’s ND football, it’s never been a rational love.
How about a very simple solution:
Instead of dangling a carrot in front of the players to play or placing faux importance by offering more money for winning we could just expand the playoffs to let’s say 24 teams and then ESPN/Bowls/Chamber of Commerces could come together and create their own version of the NIT for the other teams that are interested/want to play in those games that don’t matter.
I say scrap all of the bowls. 2 have any connection to the past and that’s just because of the stadiums they’re played in. Most of them change names every season depending on how the stock did the previous 12 months.
I want more games between top 25 teams.
Week 0/1 – 1 game – one top 10 matchup
Week 2 – 1 game
Week 3 – 0 games
Week 4 – 6 games – one top 10 matchup OSU/ND, CU/Oregon weekend
Week 5 – 4 games – zero top 10 matchups
Week 6 – 4 games – zero top 10 matchups
Week 7 – 4 games – one top 10 matchup
Week 8 – 4 games – one top 10 matchuo
Week 9 – 2 games – zero top 10 matchups
Week 10 – 5 games – zero top 10 matchups – Bama/LSU, Bedlam
Week 11 – 4 games – two top 10 matchups
Week 12 – 3 games – zero top 10 matchups
Week 13 – 2 games – one top 10 matchup
That’s 40 games out of roughly 798 games that were top 25 matchups. There were only 7 games between top 10 teams.
Well if there were more top ten matchups, you’d have fewer top ten matchups because teams would lose top ten matchups and fall out of the top ten.
Or another way to think about it, maybe you wouldn’t have 3 13-0 teams and 4 one loss teams in the top 10. Penn State is 1-2 vs the top 25 with a lone win over Iowa. Penn State is a top 10 team and will make the playoffs next year. ND played 4 straight weeks against top 25 teams at one point.
Top 10’s games against top 10 (#11 thru 25 matchups). Excluding CCG.
Michigan – 2 (0)
Washington – 1 (3)
Texas – 1 (3)
Bama – 0 (4)
FSU – 1 (1)
UGA – 1 (3)
OSU – 3 (0)
Oregon – 1 (3)
Mizzou – 1 (4)
PSU – 2 (1)
Penn State is going to make the playoffs based on a crap schedule. The SEC has puffed up their middle of the road teams so they get more top 25 wins. I’ll say it again, we saw how hard it was to win 4 top 25 games in a row for ND. All I’m asking is that we ask the national champion to do the same.
This is an “ice cream for dinner every night” situation.
This is billions of dollars we are talking about. How many hours a year do we spend on these websites talking about ND or CFB? The power 5 conferences generated $3.3 billion last year just for their member schools. Nevermind the fringe money that is spent off of that.
Everyone else is eating ice cream for dinner every night, why can’t I?
With all that money, they are probably eating fresh gelato.
I’m not talking about the $, I’m talking about the impracticality of having top 10 matchups every week. Especially since that will only further push certain narratives about certain teams, even if they lose a game they weren’t expected to.
That’s why I want 24 teams. I’m sick of the narrative/politics of CFB. It’s not fun or unique or what makes CFB great to have Nick Saban & Greg Sankey get in front of the press and campaign for their team.
I’m not saying every game needs to be a top 25 matchup. Michigan completely changed their scheduling to make 3 straight playoffs, that shouldn’t be the answer either.
Yeah. Everyone’s complaining about the post- season, but the regular season is way more broken. Each team plays about 3 meaningful games a year.
But doesn’t fixing the postseason that way by having it include more teams mostly fix that regular season problem because then it doesn’t matter as much how many meaningful games teams schedule, it’ll get worked out in the post-season?
It could help the regular season if the way teams are selected to the post season becomes more dependent on their wins rather than their losses.
Of course that could also be done now. But for as long as I can remember teams have been ranked basically by fewest losses, not best wins. You only really move up if a team ahead of you loses. The CFP hasn’t been much different, other than adding conference politics.
I personally think the whole system needs an complete overhaul. Anything that involves 130 teams, with ~10 a year actually competing for 2 or 4 spots, is not a great setup.
This year was kind of an outlier in that no one was really that good (the playoff teams this year might not win any games in previous playoffs). Teams were either talented but not experienced or experienced but not talented, which is how Penn State looks like hell on offense but is able to sort of sit on worse teams for 10 wins. Although now that the sport is all about transferring and emphasizing NIL money and getting to the draft as early as possible, that might be the new normal.
Here’s a quick look at the last 4 seasons minus Covid. I think it’s pretty consistent across the sport. We are so focused on talent level and the name on the helmet. In a sport that is supposed to be graded on a per year basis, there’s a lot of emphasis on historical data. And we put so much emphasis on losses in CFB instead of wins. TCU & Tennessee for example played a combined 11 of their 24 games against the top 25. UGA, Michigan, & OSU played a total 7 top 25 games.
2022
Top 10’s games against top 10 (#11 thru 25 matchups). Excluding CCG.
Georgia – 1 (1)
Michigan – 2 (0)
TCU – 1 (4) – won 4 straight top 25 games
Ohio State – 2 (1)
Bama – 2 (2) – went 2-2 in 4 straight top 25
Tenn – 2 (4)
Clem – 1 (2)
Utah – 1 (2)
K-State – 3 (1)
USC – 0 – (4)
2021
Bama – 0 (4)
Michigan – 2 (0)
UGA – 1 (3)
Cinci – 1 (0)
ND – 1 (1)
OSU – 2 (2)
Baylor – 1 (3)
Ole Miss -1 (3)
Ok St – 1 (3)
Mich St – 2 (1)
2019
LSU – 4 (0)
OSU – 1 (3)
Clemson – 0 (1)
Oklahoma – 0 (3)
UGA – 2 (1)
Oregon – 0 (2)
Baylor – 1 (0)
Wisc – 2 (2)
Florida – 3 (0)
Penn State – 1 (3)
2018
Bama – 1 (2)
Clemson – 0 (2)
ND – 1 (3)
OU – 0 (2)
UGA – 2 (3) – 3-1 in 4 straight top 25 games
OSU – 2 (2)
Mich – 1 (4)
UCF – 0 (1)
Wash – 2 (2)
Florida – 2 (1)
But a 24 team playoff doesn’t create any more Top 10 matchups than a 12 Team playoff would, right? So we’re adding one more game for Michigan against a Louisville or NC State? I guess that’s fine, but it’s not really a huge needle-mover.
I think it would because it would maximize revenue for the schools. Right now the risk/reward is heavily favored to the risk side in scheduling them. I believe if ND could make the playoffs and go 9-3 with 3 top 10 games and 3 top 25 games they would do it in heartbeat. They would set themselves up for a great revenue stream plus be able to demand more money from NBC or any provider without compromising a chance to compete for a NC.
Right now it’s better to schedule out for 1 game and kind of hope for your rival to be good so that you get a couple of big tv draw games. You hope to win 1 or lose close and win the other win. Fill in the schedule with teams 50-95 and then a couple of 100-133 teams.
As has been pointed out in multiple comments. Most people will say they want the Holtz days of Irish scheduling. Well that was an anomaly and honestly it probably cost them a couple of NC’s. I would have taken a couple of those teams in a 24 team playoff with games in South Bend. I would also bet the same on future Freeman teams
I think it’s the players who are playing. The ones who are left. Thanks to you, the staff, our fellows here, and the other resources, I have grown to know them. I’d like to see them play.
Thank you to Eric for a concise list of how things have gotten continuously worse as people have tried to fix college football, with everything from the move to the playoff to relaxed transfer policies and NIL making the sport actively worse. Harrumph.
But maybe this time they’ve got it
Just a dumb comment.
Because things are not great, anything else we try will only be worse, so we should leave it as it is, which we’ve already established, is not great.
How credulous people are being towards the playoff and the way CFB is heading astounds me and it’s clear I’m not the only one.
That still doesn’t justify the argument that “everything sucks so why should we try something different”
“all our changes suck so let’s change again” is worse. We can in fact go back. Well probably not on having dozens of bowl games, too much money involved there, but the B1G #6 playing the ACC #7 on December 28th or whatever doesn’t bother me much
I’m also in favor of fewer bowl games – I just proposed 20, inclusive of the playoffs
Since I’ve been following some BIG team’s starting QBs, I noticed how thin some of their teams are becoming losing QBs to the Portal their subsequent chases to replace them for 2024 even with some of those teams heading into the bowls.
Just few situations in the BIG:
Michigan State has seen a total of twenty-two or so players in total enter the Portal. All five OL starters and three of their second string OL players entered the Portal though two OL starters have been attracted back.
Even considering transfers increase with new coaches and backups look for greener pastures especially with the HC shopping for a better QB, these seem extreme but normative for many programs.
Nebraska might actually poach Dylan Raiola from UGA so that would probably calm their nerves an awful lot.
If they reimposed the one-year undergrad transfer rule unless there’s a head coaching change, it might kill two birds with one stone. You wouldn’t have to constantly rerecruit the existing roster or forcibly churn underperforming players, are unlikely to have these some of these mass defections, and hopefully stop the accelerating coaching arms race where someone starts at $8 mil a year but might get fired after two years.
True or have transfers sign two year contracts. But who will impose the change? The NCAA? One conference when others do not? Some of those Michigan State players have transferred once or twice before.
Why should players have to sit out a year when transferring but coaches shouldn’t? Make them both have to sit out a year.
Brian Kelly having to sit in the stands and watch LSU for a year while Orgeron slogged through a lameduck season would have been absolutely fantastic entertainment for college football fans.
My solution for the regular season and the post Season.
Run it like a Chess Tournament. The highest rated team from the previous season plays the (133 teams) 67th rated team from the previous season. Winners sort up and losers sort down. Week two #1 plays the lowest ranked winning team. #67 who lost to # 1 last week plays the lowest ranked losing team, unless there was an upset in week 1, in which case #42 or whoever was upset would play the lowest ranked losing team. As the season progresses, teams with same records play other teams with same records, ranked from highest to lowest in their win-loss grouping. By the end of the season, you will have the teams that are x-0 playing each other, the teams that are x-2 playing each other, etc… the number of undefeated teams is cut in half every week. In 6 or 7 weeks you’ll have a clear picture of the top teams. Throw in a bye week for each team, and possibly if you want to extend the season a few weeks, then Maybe in week 5 you mix it up so teams play up or down a record (4-1 vs 5-0, 3-2 vs 2-3, 1-4 vs 0-5) etc. When you get to the end of week 10, or 12, then 12 teams are slotted into the playoff based on their record for the season, and then on where they were ranked last year. So a 9-1 team that was ranked 4th last year gets a higher seeding than a 9-1 team that was ranked 9th last year. And likewise, a team that was ranked 120th last year that goes 3-7 this year is ranked higher than a team that was 78 last year and goes 2-8.