The future of college football's bowl games rests with the conferences and their television partners, and neither has said what it wants as the College Football Playoff closes in on 24 teams, Bowl Season executive director Nick Carparelli told CBS Sports.
Roughly six bowl executives gathered in Irving, Texas, last week to discuss the future of college football's bowl season. They represented a cross-section of Group of Six and Power Four bowl games. Some of them have spent decades in a business that, for most of that time, renewed itself every few years with little more than a handshake and a few signatures.
That era is over, and they know it. Now they're trying to prepare for a postseason being redrawn around them by people who haven't finished the blueprint.
The College Football Playoff is on the verge of doubling its field to 24 teams starting in 2027 after reaching a handshake agreement, according to multiple reports. Nearly $350 million will be added to the $1.3 billion deal with ESPN, which is expected to run six years, the typical length for the CFP contract and the separate deals among the Bowl Season's 35 bowl games serving 10 conferences.
The bowls' agreements with their conference partners, which ran six years to mirror the CFP cycle, expire after this season, and so do their television deals. CFP expansion will pull 12 more teams out of the bowl pool, nearly all of them from Power Four conferences. The first two rounds are expected to be played on campuses, with the New Year's Six bowls hosting the quarterfinals and semifinals.
"I would say that it's too soon to predict the number of bowl games moving forward," Carparelli told CBS Sports. "But I think it's safe to say that, as a complementary part of college football's postseason, there will still be more teams playing in bowl games than are participating in the playoff."
He added: "The bowl system is not going anywhere."
The bowl system might not disappear, but it could change drastically.
A postseason waiting on direction
How many games survive is the question nobody will answer. The bowl lineup already turned over this year. The LA Bowl and Detroit's GameAbove Sports Bowl are gone, replaced by the new Puerto Rico Bowl and the returning Poinsettia Bowl.
That makes 35 bowl games for a system that is still a ratings win for ESPN, though conferences worry about dwindling returns as the playoff expands to 24 teams.
Michigan and Texas drew 9.1 million viewers in last season's Citrus Bowl. Both would have been playoff teams in a 24-team field, leaving bowls like the Citrus to fill premium slots with lesser teams.
But live sports remain a major ratings win for networks, making bowl games valuable inventory. Non-playoff bowls on ESPN's networks averaged 3.1 million viewers last season, up 13% from the year before. It was the highest non-playoff average since the 2015-16 season.
Only 22.8% of regular-season games through Week 7 this year have eclipsed 3.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen TV ratings for trackable college football games. Only 3.5% of games have drawn ratings equal to or greater than last season's Citrus Bowl.
"Even with 24 in the playoff, there's still nearly 60 deserving teams that may want a place to play," Carparelli said. "It's been proven that fans still love watching those games."
Bowl games are clearly valuable, particularly during the doldrums of December, but will the product be watered down if 12 additional playoff games pull viewers' attention?
That's a question for conference, bowl and media executives to answer before the 2027 season.
ESPN's direct relationship with the system also helps steer the future. ESPN Events owns and operates 17 bowl games. Carparelli said those games "are a really important part of bowl season" and that ESPN Events as an enterprise "remains very profitable for ESPN."
"So I think we should expect to see the majority of those games continue," he said.
Carparelli said ESPN Events has shown no hesitation as the network takes on more playoff games, costing nearly a quarter billion dollars annually.
"Absolutely not," Carparelli said. "Quite the opposite. You know, if you think about it, December and January is an exciting time of year in college football. And with the expanded playoff, you're going to have four or five rounds that are spaced 10 days apart. I don't think the television networks or the fans want to go 10 days with no college football at the height of the season."
The bowls are waiting on the conferences. The conferences are waiting on the playoff. Once the format is final, Carparelli said, he expects serious conversations before the end of the year.
"It's hard for any of the conferences to turn their focus on what they want next from the bowl system until that's done," Carparelli said. "But we have great indication from them and great conversations that they are ready to talk about opportunities beyond the CFP, ASAP, after any formal announcement is made."
Reimagining bowl season
The Power Four conferences have already floated one idea.
Yahoo! Sports reported in March on a proposal shared with high-level administrators: a consortium of 10 bowls pitting Power Four programs against each other, untethered from traditional conference affiliations, with the conferences controlling television rights instead of the bowls and potentially selling them on the open market. ESPN was part of the proposal. The top 10 non-playoff bowls, all matching Power Four teams, paid out more than $50 million combined last season, according to the report.
Carparelli confirmed to CBS Sports the concept came from the leagues.
"That's a very interesting concept," he said. "It's a concept that the conferences presented to us to think about. And our membership is generally accepting of that idea."
The ideas don't stop there.
"I think there's definitely a lot of creative thinking around maximizing bowl game matchups after the playoff selections are made, maximizing geography, maximizing quality of teams, maximizing rivalries," Carparelli said.
Even the traditional New Year's Eve and New Year's Day slots could move. Conference tie-ins to specific bowl sites might also be out the window.
The Group of Six conferences have not pitched a similar package, but they remain engaged.
For the people who actually stage the games, the cost of waiting is measured in sponsorships and gate receipts.
The longer a decision drags, "the more challenging it gets to figure out funding mechanisms," said Scott Ramsey, president and CEO of the Music City Bowl. For his game, that means broadcast partners, sponsorships and gate revenue. The Music City Bowl's SEC-Big Ten matchup is wide open once its contract expires this year.
"Certainly the value proposition, you know, kind of shifted to viewership instead of attendance, because you did see, you know, some drop in attendance," Ramsey said.
Bowl Season has run its own projections for the next cycle, Carparelli said, but "it's just speculation and is completely dependent on what the conferences ultimately are going to want." Asked whether the number of bowl games drastically changed from 35 in those studies, he declined to comment.
"There is every indication that there is a need and a desire for more postseason opportunities beyond the playoff," Carparelli said. "It's just a matter of figuring out what that looks like once the dust settles."
