If you count the national championship game, there are currently 40 bowl game in FBS. Some people complain about having too many bowl games.
There won’t be any newly added bowl games until 2020, but where might they go next?
Austin? South Carolina? Dubai? Toronto? Los Angeles?
Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images
But they’ll have to just keep on complaining, because the bowl slate will most likely expand at least a little bit in a few years.
ESPN Regional Television, the official name of the subsidiary company referred to as ESPN Events, is a big reason why the bowl system has ballooned from 25 in 2000 to the number it’s at today. Bowls are live events that can fill programming slots in December, and that’s a big deal to cable networks.
So, when are we getting more of them?
In 2016, the NCAA placed a moratorium on bowl expansion. It’s not the first time it’s happened (the last one was in 2011), but it will stop expansion of the postseason at least for a little bit.
The Division I Council voted Friday to place a three-year moratorium on certifying new postseason football bowl games. The moratorium is intended to give a working group examining postseason football, including bowl certification criteria, time to complete its work. Existing postseason bowls will continue to operate while the moratorium is in effect. New and existing bowls will have the opportunity to attract conference commitments for the 2020 bowl season.
(2017 does have a new game, sort of, with the Miami Beach Bowl moving to Frisco, Texas, but that wasn’t exactly a totally new event. Also, the Poinesettia Bowl is no more.)
When we do get more bowls, where will they be?
After the 2011 moratorium passed, some cities got new bowls (Miami, Nassau, Orlando, Boca Raton, and Montgomery), while others were left out in the cold.
As many as nine locations are under consideration to begin bowl games in 2014, according to sources: Miami, Orlando, Little Rock, Ark.; Boca Raton, Fla.; Montgomery, Ala.; Los Angeles; Ireland; Dubai and either Toronto or Nassau, Bahamas.
Ireland has experience hosting preseason college football, and the Bahamas Bowl has proved international travel for the postseason isn’t impossible. For a few seasons, Toronto hosted the International Bowl in the postseason.
Dubai might seem outlandish, but the last two seasons has shown that Week 0 games in Australia can be done, so why not in the postseason as well? That’s the question that the CEO of Melbourne Stadiums Limited asks. So don’t be surprised if the Land Down Under makes a push to host a game when the moratorium lifts.
“The necessities for a bowl game seem to be in place (there), including a solid management team,” Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said. “A stadium, local support and an appetite for college football.”
As far as stateside destinations: When postseason expansion returns, there could be at least three other locations ready to bid.
Austin’s an obvious destination with Darrell K. Royal Stadium as a 100,000-seat venue, even though a young bowl game would likely fall far short of filling it. Los Angeles would be an intriguing location, given the new stadium set to open in a few years. One group’s been trying for years to launch a Christmas game in L.A.
Myrtle Beach and Charleston banked on Coastal Carolina’s move to FBS as a positive step. They missed out on a game, but could vie for one again.
And there will certainly be other suitors we aren’t even thinking of.
Boise, Idaho isn’t the obvious destination for a bowl game, but the city has one. That means pretty much any city can put together a convincing bid for a bowl game if it’s got the wherewithal to do so.
Who knows who else will throw their hat into the ring in 2020, when it’s time to look at bowl expansion again?
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