Our culture has become obsessed with seasons, and a season within a season is approaching. We're talking college football's bowl season.
The pageantry of college bowl season once was rivaled by few things in American culture. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, perhaps, the Super Bowl or World Series, and March Madness certainly have settled into the pantheon of American events.
For Arkansans of a certain age, the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day represented the pinnacle. It meant the Hogs had won the Southwest Conference title, and depending on the college football landscape, might have a shot at playing for another title, one of a national bent.
But like seeing a new release in a movie theater, bowl games aren't what they used to be. They used to represent a reward for the best in the land. Now they represent not much more than a money grab to satiate corporate pockets and football-hungry fans.
College football still delivers its share of magic; it's just a different strain these days.
Once the Bowl Championship Series started pairing the top two (ranked) teams in a national championship game in the '90s, a playoff was inevitable. And it's the right thing, a playoff. Still, we admit some nostalgia for the old system that had the Southwest Conference champ (sometimes Arkansas) hosting the Cotton Bowl, the SEC champ in the Sugar, the winner of the old Big 8 in the Orange and the Big Ten and Pac 8/10 facing off in the Rose Bowl. All on New Year's Day.
But relying on AP voters to crown a champ based on those games, despite all the pageantry, was destined for change. (And pre-1965, the AP determined its champ before the bowl games. See Arkansas football, 1964.) For a long time, Division 1 college football was the only sport on the planet that didn't determine its champion in some sort of playoff format.
And now, as the (proper noun) College Football Playoff prepares to expand to 12 teams beginning in 2024 and new transfer rules shift the pendulum dramatically in favor of players, bowl games have become even more irrelevant. Many star players who plan to test the NFL waters opt out of their teams' bowl games, and the transfer portal siphons 10 to 15 players from every Power 5 team each December. (Recruiting now includes active players on different teams.)
This year, 43 bowl games will be staged. That means that roughly two-thirds of the 130 teams playing at the highest level of college football--the laboriously labeled Division 1 Football Bowl Series (FBS)--get to finish their seasons in bowls, where TV money rains player swag bags like the summer monsoon in Sri Lanka.
Win six and you're in. Sometimes the system even rewards five-win teams when not enough teams achieve the low bar of six. Indeed, rewarding mediocrity has become an American institution.
(We're looking at you, expanded NFL playoffs.)
Last year, of the 42 bowls played, two were held in a 17,000-seat soccer stadium in suburban Dallas. And many such bowls draw tens of fans. But the bowls roll on because, regardless of the fans in stands, people on couches are watching.
Tens of millions of them, watching a gaggle of mediocrity providing what's become seasonal white noise, and Disney once again cashing checks with each stoppage in play.
Disney now owns almost all of the bowl games outright, televises all but one, and its ESPN Events division operated 22 of them last year. This plethora of post-season college football rewards mediocrity, sure, but it generates a lot of revenue.
The Standard Media Index estimates that Disney/ESPN lost $21.7 million in potential ad revenue when 14 bowls were canceled in 2020 due to covid, as reported by The Athletic. That's likely less than a third of what could've been made, and the bowls that didn't get played in 2020 were less lucrative ones, like the Bahamas Bowl and, to Hog fans' chagrin once TCU opted out at the last minute, the Texas Bowl.
If no bowls had been played after the 2020 season, Disney was set to lose at least $800 million in ad revenue, it's estimated. That's the amount reaped in 2019 by Walt's old company. And that doesn't include ad revenue for streaming service ESPN+.
So for Disney, the pathway to fulfill its Buy-N-Large destiny runs at least in part through the homes of college football fans nationwide (or the South and Midwest, anyway). Our entertainment-obsessed culture eats up sports, and 43 bowl games--whether there are 75,000 people in attendance or 75--represent a lot of sponsorship opportunities to cash and ad spots to place.
Bowl season does retain some of its magic when the teams are legit. Hog calls reverberating through the New Year's Day sun in Tampa this past New Year's Day, and likely again in Memphis later this month; seeing OU fans fill the Alamodome last year for Bob Stoops' return as interim coach in the Alamo Bowl; Ole Miss and Baylor fans partying around an epic showdown in the Sugar Bowl. . . . The big bowls, the New Year's Six, likely will remain big deals.
For Arkansas, any bowl right now is a big deal, as the program continues to emerge from the valley of the shadow of Chad Morris.
The Outback Bowl payout this past year for the Hogs was $6.4 million, and the branding value coming out of that win was much, much higher. This year, the Outback-turned-Reliaquest Bowl will pay $6.4 million per team. For this year's 6-6 hard-luck Hogs, a Liberty Bowl appearance would garner a $6 million payout (that's up from its $4.7 million payout last year, per the Business of College Sports.)
For now, the Liberty (or the Texas) Bowl will suffice. But local standards used to center on Dallas with the Hyatt Regency serving as Arkansas home base. And it was a scene. Milling around the hotel lobby in the days leading up to the game was an experience in and of itself, the place packed to the brim in cardinal and white. Random Hog calls could be heard breaking out in random restaurants, parking decks or intersections throughout the metroplex. (And then there was nearby Barnhill South, aka the old Reunion Arena, in basketball season.)
The magic of bowl season might not be what it used to be. We suspect the 12-team playoff will be well received. But in terms of recapturing the pageantry of old, it would be best if the number of bowls was significantly reduced.
But as long as money is calling the shots, that's not going to happen.
Which means: That's not going to happen.