ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit believes that the sport’s current bowl format should be drastically altered, if not eliminated entirely.
With the 12-team playoff coming next season to determine a national champion, Herbstreit believes that bowls will lose even more of their luster than they already have.
“I think the 12-team playoff is going to create a lot of buzz,” Herbstreit said on College GameDay. “How many games will that be, seven total? You have the quarterfinals, the semis and the national championship. It’s going to remind me next year of [the bowls] being worse. I think we’re heading to—I’m a college basketball fan; we all get our bracket out, March Madness. Tell me about the NIT; how’s that going for you? You know, who is even in the NIT? That’s where bowls are going next year.”
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With all of the bowl game opt-outs, and players electing to skip what used to be the most important game of the season for teams across the sport, the bowl system is certainly broken in its current format. So what Herbstreit suggests next is not too surprising. Why not just eliminate the bowls entirely?
“I think you eliminate the bowls,” Herbstreit added. “Nobody wants to play in them, don’t play the bowls. Just have the 12 teams—we’ll get excited about those—and if you want to add maybe five or six bowls outside of that, then do five or six. But we’re getting to a point where it’s ridiculous. We’re putting 6–6 teams in bowl games nobody care about. If the players don’t want to play in them, hell with it, don’t have bowl games any more.”
Well, that’s certainly one take to have on the situation. In a world where schools outside of the Power 4 now seem to matter less and less, we could be heading towards a future in Herbstreit’s scenario where a Group of 5 conference champion now will not play in a bowl game. Because according to Herbstreit, if they’re not a playoff team, then what’s the point?
The future of the sport is certainly in flux. From conference realignment, and expanded playoff, an amended bowl season and everything in between, college football will look much different in five years than it does today.
