I’ve been looking for information about what’s going to happen to some of the bowls this year as a result of the new playoffs and the four on-campus quarterfinal games. Last season we had 42 certified bowl games and had to dip into the 5-7 batch to fill the last one. This year there will be eight less teams in the hopper to fill bowls on selection Sunday. The winners of the on-campus games will move on to established bowls and the losers will go home.
To me, it appears some bowls won’t be recertified. But I haven’t seen anything anywhere that addresses that situation.
I’m guessing the Bahamas Bowl might be first up on the chopping block. Anybody have any insight on this?
The quarterfinal games are considered bowl games, which should keep the numbers the same. But my math could be off.
Yeah but they’re at campus sites - not in Nashville, Montgomery, Tucson, Shreveport or other cities that normally host bowls. It would seem some towns are going to lose their bowls because of that. The whole thing is confusing. And there seems to be radio silence on the issue.
First round is campus sites. Quarterfinals and semifinals will be neutral site bowl games. That’s 12 teams in the playoffs playing in a total of 6 bowl games. So the new playoff format won’t have any impact on the rest of the bowls.
The teams eliminated in the campus site first round don’t play in any bowl game. Those teams would have been playing in the early bowls if they didn’t make the first round.
I know, but the 4 semifinal teams are all playing in 2 bowl games. So that evens it out. Big picture is 12 teams playing in 6 bowl games.
Maybe I’m just dense but I still don’t understand how you can take four teams away from the mid-December bowls and still keep the same number of mid December bowls.
Next year the quarterfinals are:
Fiesta, Peach, Rose, Sugar
And the semifinals are:
Orange, Cotton
So you have 8 teams taking up 6 bowls which last year had 12 teams play in them. That opens up four spots downstream in the non-NY6 bowl games, but there are also four fewer bowl eligible teams since four teams were eliminated in the campus games. So it all balances out
Basically you take away four teams, but also have four teams play a second bowl so it’s even.
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That must be the key. Four teams will play in two bowls for the first time ever.
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The MAC Championship (Bowl) @ Ford Field is the only one that matters now.
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