For 70 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, the 2024 season concludes with a bowl game not attached to the 12-team College Football Playoff. Those 35 games may not receive as much attention, but to many of the players, universities, fans and communities involved, they remain a relevant cap to a season that ends short of a championship.
That’s what Nick Carparelli says whenever the future viability of those bowls is discussed, and the potential for further expansion of the College Football Playoff in the coming years does not affect his message.
“People love watching bowl games,” said Carparelli, the executive director of Bowl Season, which is an advocacy body for college football’s postseason games. “It’s that unique time of year where people will turn on their TV set on a Wednesday night in December looking for a bowl game. They might not even know what bowl game they’re going to find. They just know they’re going to find one, and they’re going to watch it.”
The bowls face more challenges than at any time in the sport’s history. The College Football Playoff consumes nearly all of the attention directed toward the postseason. The opening of the transfer portal in early December allows players with eligibility remaining to leave their teams and find their 2025 school, while others opt out to avoid risking further injury before entering the NFL Draft. Sun Belt champion Marshall withdrew from the Independence Bowl six days after accepting an invitation, after head coach Charles Huff left to take the same job at Southern Miss and dozens of players entered the portal. The bowl scrambled to find a last-minute replacement and was able to replace the Thundering Herd with nearby Louisiana Tech (5-7).
It’s a further reminder that bowl games and their directors no longer are the kingpins they once were, pitting eligible schools against one another until one secured the bid by agreeing to take on a larger ticket allotment. The new marketplace has forced bowls to change the way they do business. Some try to appeal to audiences with a catchy slogan or memorable mascot, while others have doubled down on tradition. Both approaches are critical pivots to not only stay relevant but stay in business.
“I can’t speak for two years from now, ’26 and beyond, just how many games you can support with the economics of the future,” said Florida Citrus Sports chief executive officer Steve Hogan, whose organization runs the Citrus and Pop-Tarts bowls. “I firmly believe that there are still postseason games that are needed and are going to be supported and are going to be desired. I just don’t know how many.”
Some fans believe there are too many bowls, yet the viewership numbers contradict that undercurrent of fatigue. During the 2023-24 college basketball season, men’s and women’s, only two games generated more than 2 million viewers until the first week of February, according to numbers compiled by Sports Media Watch.
Meanwhile, in the 2023-24 college football season, 25 non-Playoff bowl games generated more than 2 million viewers, and 15 exceeded 3 million. The Citrus Bowl, in which Tennessee routed Iowa 35-0, drew 6.8 million viewers, the highest among the non-CFP bowls. The Celtics-Lakers game on Christmas Day 2023, the NBA’s highest-rated game of the ’23-24 regular season, generated 5.01 million viewers, and only six NBA regular-season games surpassed 3 million.
“Those ratings are really strong at the outset and continue to get better,” Hogan said. “It fits in between Playoff games and NFL games and everything else. There’s no doubt that people are consuming it, want to consume it, are going to continue to consume it, but it still has to be viable for everybody.”
Television again will play a role in the bowl system’s long-term future. Of the 41 CFP and bowl games, 38 appear on the ESPN family of networks, and 17 bowls are owned by ESPN Events. Fox and CBS each televise one bowl. Those networks, along with NBC, just finished their second season splitting the Big Ten’s broadcast rights and could have incentives to make bids for additional bowl games when the current contracts expire following the 2025-26 season.
Another adjustment Carparelli has proposed is for an upper tier of bowls to band together and draft from a pool of accomplished non-Playoff teams. If the top six bowls in payouts beyond the CFP (Citrus, Alamo, ReliaQuest, Holiday, Texas, Pop-Tarts) chose from the top 12 available non-CFP teams instead of being bound to inviting teams from their affiliated conferences, they could create many compelling matchups. For instance, Colorado and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter could face Alabama. Or Iowa State and Missouri could renew their dormant Telephone Trophy rivalry. Or a Group of 5 conference champion such as Army (11-2) could find itself in an upper-level bowl.
As it stands, the conference obligations can open the door for imbalance. The Big Ten and SEC have tie-ins with the Citrus and ReliaQuest bowls, and the number of CFP teams representing those two conferences can wreak havoc on matchups down the selection ladder. Two years ago, for instance, the Citrus selected Big Ten West Division champion Purdue (8-5) to face LSU (9-3). In the ensuing weeks, the Boilermakers lost coach Jeff Brohm and several players left for the transfer portal or the NFL Draft. The Tigers won 63-7.
“We’d like to see more flexibility in the selection process after the 12 teams are chosen for the CFP. Sometimes the strict conference tie-ins with bowl games restrict putting together the best matchups. So, if you took the next group of ranked teams that have had successful seasons and placed them and matched them up against each other in the next level of bowl game, we could really create some exciting matchups that people will look forward to.”
Some may bristle at that suggestion, however. The Citrus, for instance, has selected the top Big Ten and SEC team left out of the highest structure — CFP or the preceding Bowl Championship Series and Bowl Coalition — since 1993. Before 2014, when the CFP allowed more than two teams from each conference to participate in New Year’s Six bowls, the Citrus often welcomed top-10 teams and once had a top-5 matchup.
The Big Ten and SEC regularly account for the sport’s highest television ratings, and that’s doubly true when they compete against one another. This year, the Citrus Bowl chose No. 20 Illinois (9-3) from the Big Ten and No. 15 South Carolina (9-3) from the SEC. The Tampa-based ReliaQuest Bowl, which selects second among the Big Ten bowl and usually is the most coveted landing spot among SEC teams after the Citrus, picked No. 13 Alabama (9-3) against unranked Michigan (7-5).
“It’s a relationship business,” Hogan said. “We believe we’ve got a great game, 30-plus years with the Southeastern Conference and with the Big Ten, the oldest relationships they have in the postseason, outside of the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl, respectively. And we’re proud of that.”
In addition to television ratings, competitive balance and geography also matter to bowls’ feasibility. For the second time in three years, Arkansas will compete in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis. For both parties, the attraction is mutual. Memphis sits just east of Arkansas via a long bridge across the Mississippi River, and plenty of Razorback alums live in the metro area. It’s an easy drive for fans throughout the state, which matters after a 6-6 regular season; if Arkansas’ bowl trip required a flight, fans may decline the chance to attend.
“We had such a great experience the last time we were there,” Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said. “We can get some people there and it’s close for our kids and we can bus up there, which we will, and have a good time and have a lot of familiar faces in the crowd.
“College athletics is still about moms and dads getting to the games, being able to see their sons play, and we think that will be able to happen.”
Bowl officials view their participants in a similar light: Although they like variance, certainty is even more important. With Arkansas, the Liberty Bowl gets a regional anchor team. The Razorbacks’ opponent, Texas Tech, has a motivated fan base. Arkansas and Texas Tech competed against one another in the Southwest Conference from 1957 to 1991, and Red Raiders coach Joey McGuire grew up in Texarkana, Texas.
“The families can get here, and it’s not like they have to pay thousands of dollars to fly across the country,” Liberty Bowl executive director Steve Ehrhart said. “The matchup, I think, is really an important factor too, because having a good, close game is going to drive your television as much as anything.”
This year marks the 66th edition of the Liberty Bowl, which ranks seventh in longevity among postseason games. Its history includes hosting Bear Bryant’s final game as Alabama’s coach in 1982. It’s one of multiple bowls with a resonant patriotic theme, and the Liberty Bowl prominently features about 150 local sponsors (include title sponsor AutoZone).
“Kind of borrowing that SEC phrase, it just means more to our community because we don’t have a professional football team,” Ehrhart said. “The community has to really be involved and embrace the whole mission.”
Meanwhile, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte caps its game with a mayonnaise dump over the winning coach or his designee. The Pop-Tarts Bowl has an edible mascot whose flavor is chosen by the winning team’s MVP, and its trophy is a giant toaster. As games lean into what makes them unique, college football’s patchwork postseason will keep working to adapt to whatever the future may bring.
“The fun around those brands, I just believe that’s where we are, and that’s where we’re we should be, and that’s where we’re going in the future,” Hogan said. “All of that makes for a successful bowl season.”
(Photo: Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)
Leave a Reply