There’s a fundamental problem at the center of the “What do we do about bowl games?” discussion happening in the wake of Georgia’s 63-3 dismantling of Florida State in the Orange Bowl.
Regardless of who is making the argument, they always come at it under the assumption that bowl games must survive. The goal is always that, whatever we do, it is to preserve the sanctity and tradition of the bowl system. Player autonomy should come second to ensuring that the majesty of the Myrtle Beach Bowl continues in perpetuity.
But why?
College football is a sport that is defined by its traditions. But it’s also a sport that has always been in flux. What began as a regional, niche sport has morphed into a billion-dollar business and you don’t get there without evolving.
100 years ago, the sports was dominated by Cornell and Yale. 75 years ago, Army was the gold standard of college football programs. 50 years ago, conferences had reshaped the competitive landscape. 25 years ago, we thought we’d finally figured out how to determine a national champion through the BCS.
Don’t think college football is constantly changing? Just ask the Southwest Conference, the Big East, and the Pac-12.
We like to treat college football, and college athletics in general, as this special thing that exists outside of capitalism. We want the sport to exist within the world of media rights, primetime games, and national media coverage but we don’t want any of those things to impact it in any meaningful way. We demand that student-athletes who play for millionaire coaches, millionaire athletic directors, millionaire conference officials, and millionaire broadcasters look beyond the financial incentives and put the “love of the game” first.
We are deluded.
A great way to see just how much college football has evolved in a short amount of time is to look at the current state of the bowl system. In 1971, discounting all-star games, there were 10 “team-competitive” bowl games. By 1997, there were 20. By 2006, there were 30. And by 2016, there were 40 bowl games, not including the College Football Playoff. This season, there were 43 bowl games.
The bowl game expansion didn’t happen organically. It didn’t happen because more people wanted to see football players get rewarded for their regular-season efforts. It happened because of money, pure and simple. There is a lot of money to be made in bowl games and the more of them you have, the more money you can make.
Just ask ESPN, which now owns 17 of them (a good thing to keep in mind when someone on ESPN tries to sell you on the need to save them).
Stepping back for a second, let’s remember college football’s humble origins. A regional sport where it would have been impossible for everyone to play one another in a season, let alone schedule a tournament or playoff, so bowl games were the best they could do. This was long before TV deals and primetime games and football’s ascension into becoming America’s most popular sport. But as those things happened, and the money poured in like Gatorade tumbling onto the head of a bowl-game-winning coach, the desperate need to maintain the “sanctity” of college football has always remained.
Even as coaching salaries went into the seven figures, schools generated billions of dollars off of the student’s efforts, and grown men would get on television to complain about the efforts put forth by 18-year-olds, we demanded that football players keep their focus on playing and stop worrying about themselves.
We restricted their incentive to transfer, even though coaches could come and go as they pleased (and often did).
We forced them to remain in school for an arbitrary amount of time before we deemed them capable of making a living in their profession.
We chastised them for wanting fair compensation and better protection while playing a dangerous sport, even though every adult around them was cashing in.
Thankfully we’ve come a long way in a short amount of time when it comes to player autonomy. But we’ve also learned that those gains crossed the imaginary line that so many people had put in place over how much they were willing to let college football change.
The transfer portal and NIL are, of course, the big, bad boogeymen now. Never mind the absolute greed at the heart of conference realignment and media rights deals that demand more games, more travel, and more stress to appease our lust for college football. We could live with all of that so long as it meant we got what we think we deserve when it comes to this sport.
If a school decides it wants to leave the conference it’s called home for decades to make more money elsewhere, well, we don’t like it but that’s allowed. If a coach wants to bail on his players in late November because a more lucrative offer came his way, well, that’s just how business works. But if a player wants to put his health and future first and skip a bowl game, well, by god, that cannot stand.
And that brings us back to the current state of things, where a confluence of events has led to the situation we find ourselves in. One, the College Football Playoff has, understandably, made everyone realize that bowl games, 95 percent of which were always exhibition games, are just exhibition games. Two, the transfer portal means players have the autonomy to make a change in their situation once the regular season has ended. Three, players who have a shot to get drafted don’t feel the need to risk their health and future earnings for what is, again, an exhibition game.
And that’s how we end up with grown adults complaining about how we need to do something about these greedy players who make bowl games less enjoyable.
Their answer seems to be that we need to once again limit players’ ability to transfer and that we need to put the brakes on NIL in some fashion. There are certainly honest discussions to be had about these issues, especially regarding NIL, but college football has never been very good at putting the genie back in the bottle once it’s out. Or at the very least, it certainly didn’t try very hard once coaches, admins, and conference officials all got rich and shifted the sport based on their whims and needs for even more cash.
Also, let’s be real, few people trying to do something about NIL are doing so from a place of good faith.
Here’s the crux of the whole thing: It’s not the players’ responsibility to make sure you and I enjoy watching the Orange Bowl. Almost all of those 40-something bowl games each year exist as TV products, first and foremost, and exist to make money. But none of that money actually goes to the players (except for maybe a Best Buy gift card here and there). They’re playing for coaches who will drop them like a bad habit at the first sign of a better offer. They’re playing for admins and school presidents who will sign TV deals and swap conferences without any concern for player well-being. They’re playing while ESPN and Fox Sports analysts chastise them over their decisions, all while cashing huge paychecks of their own. And they’re constantly listening to how it’s their responsibility to not give in to the “greed” that surrounds them.
If player autonomy means that, one of these days, the Music City Bowl or the Peach Bowl gets canceled because there aren’t enough players left on the roster, so be it. If we’re destined to watch bowl game blowouts every year now, that’s the cost of doing business. And if it forces the powers-that-be to evolve the sports forward, just like it’s had to every so often for over 125 years, well then that’s probably the best-case scenario.
We all know where college football is heading. Two dominant conferences that include all of the “relevant” national contenders, leaving everyone else to form a second (and third) tier. The evolution of the season into something more akin to the NFL with a focus on playoffs.
In other words, we’re leaving traditions behind left and right in the name of making more money. The same people who get on TV and bemoan this are also working for a company that is trying to make this happen, so don’t pay them much mind. It’s not pretty and it’s not what we’d ideally like, but it’s happening all the same. And as for the bowl system, it’s going to be just another victim of that growth model.
Besides, we’re not required to have 40 bowl games a year. If all of this means we start to contract these games, that’s fine. When you were a kid, there weren’t 40 bowl games in a year and you got by okay. You’ve just been duped into thinking this is the norm and tradition.
So don’t blame the players if they decide to transfer or opt out instead of playing in a bowl game. And don’t blame them if the resulting game is a dud. The system around players has forced them to act accordingly in their own best interests because that system sure isn’t concerned about that. And if you look at the dying bowl system and think to yourself, “This is the players’ fault,” well, you’re part of that system too.
Keep the Pop-Tarts Bowl, though. That was pretty fun.
