Bowl Season director says ‘market will dictate’ future

There’s panic in the realm when it comes to the future of bowl games in college football.

With the College Football Playoff destined to expand by some undetermined number of teams, high-profile schools like Notre Dame choosing to opt out of a bowl after narrowly missing out on a playoff berth, and schools like Kansas State and Iowa State foregoing bowl games on account of coaching changes, the future of non-playoff postseason college football is very much up in the air.

At the moment, it seems like fewer and fewer bowl-eligible teams are willing to participate in Bowl Season. That’s an issue for ESPN, which owns several bowl games under its ESPN Events arm, and broadcasts the vast majority of bowl games on its networks. What was once a source of pride for many college football programs has become something much less desirable in the era of expanded playoffs and the transfer portal.

Bowl contracts are set to expire after this cycle, and a retooling of how Bowl Season operates could very well be in order. That won’t be possible until the College Football Playoff decides exactly what format it’s looking towards for future years (a decision that will need to be made by mid-January should expansion happen next season).

But Nick Carparelli, the executive director of Bowl Season, isn’t overly concerned with the headwinds facing non-playoff bowl games. He sees them as still a key part of the college football season, and one that will find a way to fit in regardless of how playoff expansion shakes out.

“We certainly have our issues that need to be resolved, but there’s probably not one issue that college athletics faces in general that doesn’t need to be reevaluated,” Carparelli told The Athletic. “At this point in time, we’re going through a major transition in the sport, and we’re excited to talk to our conference partners once bowl season’s over to work with them to decide, what does bowl season need to look like in the future?”

Part of that equation is the difficult task of determining just how many bowl games are appropriate. With more teams inclined to opt out of bowls, should fewer be on the schedule? Carparelli views the conundrum as something the market will dictate.

“The bowl system is a market-driven system,” he said. “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.

“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.”

So far the market, at least from a television viewing perspective, has remained strong. Despite certain teams not having interest in participating in bowl games, fans are still tuning in at high clips. Last year, nine bowl games averaged more than four million viewers, with several games eclipsing the six-million mark. These games are still very clearly lucrative for television networks, even if they are not as meaningful as they once were to the teams playing in them.

Now, if there’s a dramatic drop in team quality, viewership could begin to decline over time. But bowl games fill windows on the sports calendar when little else is happening and people tend to be away from work, which is a great combo for viewership. So long as people continue to watch, there’s incentive to keep the bowl system humming.