The Future of Bowl Season is Uncertain
Bowl season is in full swing, with college football exhibitions replacing holiday classics on TVs across America. What we have now is much different than what it looked like 25 years ago.
Before it was a full-blown system, there were a handful of college football games that hosted the best teams in the sport in exotic locations. It ballooned to a little more than a dozen in the 70s and 80s. During the 90s and into the 00s, the bowl system doubled in size.
The CFP expansion threw a new wrinkle into the bowl system, absorbing the most prestigious games from the New Year’s Six. The Alamo, Outback, and Citrus Bowls are among the best of the best, but even Notre Dame elected to bypass the Citrus Bowl after getting spurned by the CFP committee. So what does that leave for the future of bowl games?
This is the last year of a six-year cycle for bowl game agreements. The deal started during the pandemic, before CFP expansion and the destruction of the Pac-12. Bowl Season executive director Nick Carparelli says the next iteration of agreements will not be decided until the future of the CFP is determined. When the dust settles, Carparelli believes there will still be a place for bowl games in college football.
“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,” Carparelli told The Athletic.
“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.”
The market has already dictated the end of one game. On3’s Brett McMurphy reports that the LA Bowl, played between Washington and Boise State, will be the last of its four-year run. Even though some games may be eliminated, the bowl system will ensure that there are enough games for teams outside of the College Football Playoff that want to conclude a winning season with an extra postseason game.
“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,” said Carpelli.
That sentiment very much applies to the Kentucky football program. The Wildcats would have been in contention in an expanded CFP multiple times during the Mark Stoops era, but let’s be real, those years will be outliers. Attending eight consecutive bowl games was a point of pride for the program. Bowl games mean something different to everybody. Returning to one, even to play for a giant Pop-Tart or a pot of baked beans, is significant. We do not know what the future of the bowl system will look like, but fortunately, the plan is to keep them alive for the foreseeable future.
