If there is a college football season, bowl industry leaders say there will be a postseason
The fate of college football’s bowl industry has not exactly been a front-burner topic during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly given the myriad obstacles schools face in merely resuming college football this fall.
But assuming there is a season, the bowl industry says it collectively stands ready to hold a full postseason — whenever that might occur.
“It’s important that the bowl system as a whole stays in the conversation,” said Nick Carparelli, a former Big East/American Athletic Conference associate commissioner and Under Armour executive who took over as executive director of the Football Bowl Association earlier this year. “We are not in position to be dictating how all this is going to unfold, but we’re remaining patient and we’re prepared to be flexible.”
Could that mean bowl games in January and February, or even as late as May if some of the more extreme models for a college football season end up coming to fruition? Conceivably, according to Carparelli and a handful of bowl executives contacted by USA TODAY Sports.
At the same time, the dynamics surrounding how this season might play out could be a financial blow to some bowl games, which are typically anchored to corporate sponsorship, hospitality events surrounding the game and tourism during the holiday season.
There’s also a legitimate question about how bowl games will fit into a schedule where some conferences may start and finish the season at different times and whether there would be anywhere close to enough teams to fill the 44 postseason games scheduled for this season, which is three more than last year after new bowls were approved in Los Angeles, Myrtle Beach and Fenway Park in Boston.
“Some people would argue that bowl games have become more and more made-for-TV events so the crowd in the stadium isn’t as important, but there’s a whole issue of flying to a city for five, six, seven days, going to all these events and a lot of people may look at that skeptically,” said Gary Cavalli, who retired as executive director of the Foster Farms Bowl (now RedBox Bowl) in 2015. “If I was a bowl director, it’s something I’d be concerned about.”
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Though the bowl industry has collectively bemoaned its second-tier status since the advent of the College Football Playoff, bowls outside the New Year’s Six still generate enough revenue to distribute $92 million to conferences. But in addition to securing lucrative television deals, their financial model is also dependent on schools that participate in the games agreeing to buy a set number of tickets that it is their responsibility to sell. According to a USA TODAY study, schools had to eat a combined $25 million in unsold bowl tickets in 2017.
