Preserving the Bowls

New Year's Six Bowl Games

Let's start with the obvious one. The New Year's Six Bowl Games are not going to go away anytime soon. They would continue to become hosts for the quarterfinal and semifinal games. Preserving the New Year's Six Bowl Games will continue to keep these bowl games relevant. You can learn more on how they would work in the playoff sites page.

The Current Problem with Bowl Games

With the proposal of the 32-team playoff, you will likely ask whether bowl games are going to be eliminated. As long as the sponsors and city hosts have the money and the NCAA accepts more bowl proposals, bowl games will continue to exist. Money is a significant factor into making these bowl games and the current system happen. However, with the expansion of the College Football Playoff, I do think the bowl system is on life support. Players know that when their team doesn’t make the playoffs, some of them completely sit out of them because of the following reasons:

• Preparing for the NFL Draft
• Transfer portal
• Injury Risk
• Worthless postseason stakes

In addition, there are also teams who decided to opt out of playing in a bowl game. In the 2025 season, ten teams have declined to participate in a bowl game. The most notable one is Notre Dame, who decided to not participate in a bowl game after being the first team out of the CFP.

Viewership is as important as revenue. In addition, not all football stadiums fill all their seats in all bowl games. You also have to consider the student welfare and the validity of these bowl games, such as the articles from Sports Business Journal explaining the student athletes are the biggest losers and forbes.com explaining if bowl games are outgrowing themselves. An article from The Atlantic also explains how bowl games have really declined since 1998.

At some point, sponsors and cities will be unable to sponsor and host bowl games much longer. When that time happens, bowl games will become extinct. However, the New Year’s Six Bowl Games will survive as long as they continually host the Quarterfinal and Semifinal games. For the rest, if bowl games want to prevent extinction, they will have to find a new sponsor and/or have to move to a new location that will fund and support the bowl game.

Without Consolation Games

This is what the overall postseason composition would have looked like without implementing the consolation bowl games for eliminated playoff participants:

Further Breakdown

Here is a further breakdown if you are curious:

The Quality Problem

If the CFP decides to not implement consolation bowl games for eliminated playoff participants, we would increase the selection percentage to 71.0% because after selecting those 32 teams to the FBS playoffs, we would have about 50 bowl eligible teams remaining. That means that at least 16 more teams with losing records would be invited to play in bowl games. Basically, you would be inviting more teams with losing records to play in bowl games, which is not ideal.

Basically, both the quality of the remaining bowl games as well as the quality pool of bowl eligible teams would significantly decline as a result of expanding the playoff without implementing consolation bowl games for playoff participants.

Citrus Bowl

The seventh oldest active bowl game, the Citrus Bowl was first played as the Tangerine Bowl in 1947. It went through several renames. It was the Florida Citrus Bowl from 1983-2002 and then as the Capital One Bowl from 2003-14. Since 2015, it was the Citrus Bowl. In 1952, it earned the nickname, "Little Bowl with the Big Heart", because all the proceeds went to charity. It served as a bowl game for the non-major football teams from 1947-72. It has become a major bowl since 1973 and provided one of the highest payouts as a non-New Year's Six Bowl Game. The 1991 edition featured a team that went to split a National Championship. It has featured two ranked teams almost every year since 1985. The Citrus Bowl would get first choice of second round participants.

Alamo Bowl

The seventeenth oldest active bowl game, the Alamo Bowl was first played in 1993. Although it is the youngest bowl game to be included, the Alamo Bowl is part of the second round consolation pool due to having one of the highest payouts as a non-New Year's Six Bowl Game. It was a sold out event at least seven times in its history, pulling it off in 1995, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2011. The Alamo Bowl outbid the Holiday Bowl to become a very high-tier non-BCS/non-New Year's Six bowl game. The 2011 edition featured a Heisman winner and broke the record for combined total points scored, total offense, and touchdowns scored in a bowl game. It has featured at least one ranked team almost every year since its inception. The Alamo Bowl would get second choice of second round participants.

ReliaQuest Bowl

The thirteenth oldest active bowl game, the ReliaQuest Bowl was first played in 1986. It started out as the Hall of Fame Bowl from 1986-95. From 1996-2022, it gained partnership with Outback, and was named the Outback Bowl. The Tampa Bay-based bowl game and Outback was the longest countinuous title sponsorship until Outback discontinued their association. Since 2023, it has been sponsored by ReliaQuest. Since 2024, the Tampa Bay-based bowl game has kicked off around New Year's Eve. It has featured at least one ranked team almost every year since 1988. The ReliaQuest Bowl would get the third choice of second round participants.

Holiday Bowl

The twelfth oldest active bowl game, the Holiday Bowl was first played in 1978. The Holiday Bowl featured a team that went on to win the National Championship in 1984. It is part of the second round consolation pool due to having a very high payout as a non-New Year's Six Bowl Game. It used to be a very high-tier non-BCS/non-New Year's Six bowl game until the Alamo Bowl outbid the Holiday Bowl to upgrade itself as that very high tier non-BCS/non-New Year's Six bowl status. It has featured at least one ranked team almost every year since its inception. The Holiday Bowl would get the remaining second round participants not selected by the Citrus, Alamo, and ReliaQuest Bowls.

There's Still a Problem

Even if we only implement this solution, we would still have a very high selection of teams participating in either the 32-team field or bowl game. This is what the overall postseason composition would have looked like if we only implement consolation bowl games for second round participants:

Further Breakdown

Here is a further breakdown if you are curious: