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There’s been a rash of debate on whether or not bowl games matter this December, or at least it’s existed on my corner of the college football internet. My good friend Colton Denning wrote his own take on this – it’s worth a read – and has been in the thick of the conversation. I want to talk through this, including the debate on both sides and my take on this, because I do believe we can elevate bowl games again and make sure they continue to have a place in the sport.
On one side, you have the argument that bowl games are one of our most treasured traditions in college football. The celebration of the sport through the month of December, on random weekdays when you’re phoning it in at work or done with school, offers an opportunity to send off some of our favorite players and see match-ups we otherwise never would.
On the other, you have the arguments about mass opt-outs for transfer portal entrants and draftees, diminishing fan attendance, a ton of these teams not even having their full coaching staff, and the fact that these are ultimately exhibition games.
Bowl games should matter. The tradition around them has always been a great source of enjoyment for college football fans. Historically, they allowed our best programs to go play one final contest to help sort out conference supremacy and determine national champions. Before the advent of the BCS and College Football Playoff, they were critical in determining our national champion as some of the few nationally televised games when the sport was more regional.
But here’s the thing: they don’t anymore. Not really. The players in them still care and they still want to win those games. They still get chippy. The coaches are trying to win and build momentum for the next season. But these games have no impact on the outcome of the season and there’s nothing on the line for anybody, except maybe a bonus check for the coaching staff.
In every other sport in the world, your season is for the purpose of winning championships, whether they’re in your conference or nationally. You might have exhibitions or friendlies, but when you lose the ability to win a championship and complete your scheduled games, the season is over.
Maybe you could make a comparison to domestic soccer leagues, where you’re playing for positioning in the table so you’re in a better pan-continental league (Champions League, Copa Libertadores, etc.), but… there’s no gold at the end of the rainbow after bowl games. Maybe you get a higher number next to your name? But there’s no further competition you’re moving onto and no benefit for the following season. It’s just playing for pride.
Also, those arguments about the rosters and coaching staff looking totally different for bowl games are legitimate. Dozens of NFL prospects, the best players on most of these teams, opt out of bowl games to protect their health for the draft – and not even just the first-round guys any more! Taulia Tagovailoa isn’t playing in his bowl game, we don’t even know if he’ll be selected. You also have hundreds, if not thousands, of FBS players hitting the transfer portal before their bowl games kick off. Nearly two dozen schools made head coaching changes before you even get into the massive amounts of assistant movement.
Fans don’t care anymore either, not in the way they used to. Bowl game attendance declined every single year from 2007 to 2019, per Statista. Viewership numbers are still fine, but fans aren’t actually traveling to go to these games anymore. Whether it’s because of the improved product of watching at home, the prevalence of other fan travel for conference title games or neutral-site matchups, or just the costs to get there, people aren’t showing up.
Fine, a lot of this is known. It’s been hashed over a million times. We also know that these games are never going away. Bowl executives lavish network executives and athletic departments alike with gifts, free vacations, and excuses to get away from their normal work. They are entirely too embedded in the sport and with its power brokers to ever go away, which is part of why they inserted themselves into the College Football Playoff process.
So what do we do about all of this? How do we make bowl games great again, when the transfer portal, draft opt-outs, and the end of the AP voters as a championship determinant have neutered their relevance?
It’s simple: move them to the beginning of the season.
Labor Day Weekend, when nothing else is on except baseball, should be a national celebration of college football. All 133 teams should be playing in “bowl games”, held at neutral sites around America. Not just the Rose Bowl, the Sun Bowl, or the deposed Bahamas Bowl; put these games in Lambeau, Lucas Oil, the Meadowlands, and every other NFL stadium. Hell, let a couple of Midwestern teams play in Ohio Stadium or the Big House. Put a bowl game in every major city or stadium in America on a holiday weekend when nothing else is on and make it a massive event.
You want to solve the attendance problem? It’ll be a holiday weekend when fans are desperate to take a trip and go somewhere with their families. It’ll be lovely (or at least warm) weather in every city in the country. You won’t have fans of blue blood programs pissed off that their team only went 8-4 and uninterested in going to the finale of a season they just want to wash their hands of.
You want to solve the opt-out and coaching change problem? It’s the first game of the season. It will count for the standings and for national title contention when teams are jockeying for playoff positon at the end of the year. Everyone will be healthy and fully engaged to go start the season off on the right foot. No one sits out of a game where they can still go win a title.
We can guarantee good-on-good matchups to start the year. Announce them on Memorial Day weekend when the transfer portal dust settles, before fall camp starts. Get rid of scheduling these marquee games ten years in advance when we have no idea who will be relevant that far out. Let bowl executives have a draft and get great (or at least even) matchups or restore rivalries that aren’t being played that season.
Hell, maybe we could even extricate this nonsense bowl games-as-playoff sites structure. If bowl executives are still getting their beaks wet with marquee games early in the year, we could allow all of these playoff games until the national championship to be played on home fields, the way they should be.
I want bowl games to be a major part of college football. I want to care about these games. I want them to be played with full rosters and intact coaching staffs, in stadiums full of fans. I want them to still have an impact on the way we determine our champions. I want everyone to watch these games. Not in the detestable Sickos Committee “Oh my god, how freaking epic is it that they have a bowl full of toast for this game?!” way, but in a way where the games actually matter.
We can restore them to prominence, keep nearly a century of tradition, and make the product far better to watch. It’s all possible, just not in the way they work right now.