These bowl games are all about $$$. A chunk from tourism and a bigger chunk from TV. Until the $$$ significantly changes, nothing about the bowls will likely change. The opt-outs are also a combination symptom of the world in which we live and rapidly accelerating demise of college football, IMO.
The bowl system is a dinosaur now and needs to be buried. It’s been propped up so some could continue to feed at the trough. Bowl directors making mid 6 figure salaries, I saw where one gets $1mil, for a single 3.5hr game a year, what a joke! For far too long they impeded a real playoff, the only major sport that didn’t have one, smh. Expand the playoffs, get rid of the byes, everyone else gets a swag bag and can work harder for a post regular season game next year.
I agree. Why in the world would the Orange Bowl and ESPN pay out the money they are paying for a snooze fest of a game. That may be OK for the Pop Tart Bowls of the world but elite bowls? It makes no sense $$.
Wasn’t the Orange Bowls fault. If both teams had shown up 100%. It would have probably been a good game. Another portal win.
If there are opt outs and portal transfers for a non-playoff game, the bowls are going to stop paying money for sub-par games.
It works in the FCS because 99% of the players there will never get invited to the NFL combine. For those players, their Super Bowl are the playoffs. You fix the bowls by ending the portal completely - the portal is for those players whose HBC was sacked and for a one-time only free transfer. Subsequent transfers require a year sitting on your butt never to see the field. Each time you hit the portal after the free pass, you lose a year of eligibility.
Just read an article that the PopTart Bowl generated over 12 million dollars in media rights and had 4.3 million viewers. The most viewers as of 12/29.
The NCAA lacks the authority, knowledge, and creativity to fix the bowl system. Nothing will change unless revenue suffers. CFP expansion will probably generate enough revenue to conceal the decline in overall bowl revenue, which means more payouts to more schools, which means more support to the bowl system and thus preventing major changes. In 2012-2013 the FBS bowl games generated $500M in revenue. Projections for the 2024-2025 CFP and bowl games are as high as $2B. There is no direct comparison to the NFL but for the sake of argument I will use the NFL’s $16B revenue figure as the CFP’s inspiration. The CFP will not care about NIL and transfer portal impact on college football as long as the increased playoff field leads to increased revenue. If the expanded CFP gets close to that $2B projection we know nothing will change.
The NCAA has very little to do with the bowl system. The bowls are run by committees and have direct affiliation with the conferences. The CFP is a for profit business LLC that works directly with the conferences who members of the LLC.
At first glance, your solution sounds reasonable. At second glance, it is not practical, or as some say, it is not doable. How many Could-Be NFL talented players or Portal Bound players are going to risk an injury for play for pay game? Also, how much cash will deep pocket people will shell out for a one game contract? Also, if you pay one player, then you will have to pay the 120 plus players (60 per team) who will suit up for just one game. The payroll for this game could easily end up being a $100 million pay day.
There’s tons of great, simple, ideas out there. I don’t see how any of them get implemented in the real world though. I think to do what oragator wants, the bowl games would really need to be tied into the main season long contract. Right now, these contracts can’t even be tied to the school, performance, or playing time. So many things would have to change to implement something like this. You could do single game NIL deals for bowl games. I don’t know how exactly all these contracts are written right now, but I assume they are location based, since they can’t tied to the school. So you write them up a contract and force an appearance of some sort wherever the bowl game is. I think most of the athletes who are opting out now, will continue to opt out, because these single game deals likely won’t be big enough to make a difference. They also still don’t really force the player to play, just to travel with the team.
Yep, it’s time for the filler bowl games to go. Just keep the few for the playoffs. The filler bowl games have always been about generating ad revenue and never about must see football. I think expanding the playoffs to 12 teams makes sense (already coming next year). Beyond the Top 12, nobody really gives a damn. It keeps the integrity of the regular season in tact. Conference championship games are your extra bowl games. Those will remain competitive for obvious reasons. You know we used to get 11 regular season games and no playoff. We now have 12 regular season games, conference championships tied to the BCS playoffs. It’s just a matter of time (sooner rather than later) before they do away with all the filler bowl games. Do we really need to see an extra game for every 6 win team in FBS? No, we do not. Can’t blame the players one bit for sitting out a meaningless game. P.S. please don’t try to keep the filler bowl games alive with NIL. Besides, that solution will never work.
Monetary award for showing up will not reliably deliver actual participation. Bowls are (mostly) dead, they just don't know it yet. They will mostly be subsumed by a playoff system, at least as far as "final rankings" are concerned. Some will remain/persist as semi-regional affairs for teams that do not make the playoffs but have enough active fan support to justify the expense. But they will have the atmosphere and excitement of meaningless pro-bowls or exhibition games.
the only way they can fix the bowl system is to expand the playoffs to 32 teams. Never understood why they needed a month to play the the major bowlgames. Start a week after the league championships and play for five weeks.
This comment seems to imply that the players are at fault here, but the real fault is the people who ask them to risk themselves and their futures in games that don’t count. I’m a person who is big on loyalty and integrity, but I’m with the players on opting out. If they get hurt in a meaningless bowl game, what are fans, alumni, and schools going to do about their lost draft status? You going to cover their lost earnings? I think even asking them to play in these games is the problem. Give them meaningful games to play in.
