If it seems like college football’s bowl season started early this year, it did. Normally the Army – Navy game is the only game of the weekend that follows conference championship games, and precedes the start of Bowl season. This year, however, the Service Academy showdown had to share the date with the first bowl game of the year, the LA Bowl at SoFi Stadium. The Big Ten’s Washington Huskies made quick work of the Mountain West Champs, the Boise State Broncos in what is slated to the final game of the five-year-old Bowl’s brief history.
Like most Bowl games, the LA Bowl has gone through several sponsors, including talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel. Former NFL star Rob Gronkowski has served as the game’s “host” for the past three seasons. The Huskies 38-10 win over the Broncos brings the curtain down on the event. The game’s six year contract with the old Pac 12 has now expired, and with it, much of the interest in the putting on the contest.
The question now is whether or not the LA Bowl is just the first postseason game that doesn’t have any national title implications that will go away.
Bowl Game Opt-outs Could be a Problem
For the first time since the COVID pandemic six years ago, full teams, not just players with NFL aspirations, were opting out of playing. The Notre Dame saga is well known, but other programs like Kansas State and Iowa State also declined invites (and were both fined by the Big 12 conference) after coaching staff shakeups. With little to play for, they opted to forego the additional practice time and an extra game that could potentially benefit their younger players moving forward. Both the Cyclones and the Wildcats had higher goals going into the season than just making a bowl game. Like Notre Dame, program-wide disappointment likely played a role in the decision to skip it.
Going into the second season of the 12-team playoff – which has added four games to the December slate – the fate of the non-playoff bowl games, while unknown, appeared safe. Maybe that was a mirage?
Including the LA Bowl, there were a total of 41 bowls on the schedule (not including the College Football Playoff game) , including the Xbox Bowl in Frisco, Texas which is a replacement for the Bahama’s Bowl.
Of those contests, only the designated “New Year’s Six” are “win and advance” bowl games. The other 35 serve as rewards for players and teams who had .500 seasons or better…although this year with the opt outs, three 5-7 teams, including SEC member Mississippi State, had to serve as fill-ins.
Have Fans Lost Interest in Non-Playoff Bowls?
Does this mean there are too many bowls? Have fans – and more importantly sponsors – lost interest in the non-playoff games? Certainly in-person attendance can be a barometer, but when TV viewership goes dwindles, that’s when alarm bells go off.
So far, after just the first year of the 12-team playoff, that hasn’t been the case. The upcoming Bowl season will provide another litmus test.
Notre Dame supporters, angry at being snubbed for a spot in the playoff, are projecting a decline in interest in the game the Irish were ticketed for, the Pop Tarts Bowl in Orlando, Florida. Bowl organizers disagree and expect significant interest in the BYU – Georgia Tech match up.
The bottom line is that even the non-playoff bowl games are valuable television programming. And until that changes, they’re likely to continue as is, regardless of the expansion of the College Football Playoff.
Are Non-Playoff Bowl Games Really an Endangered Species?