POINT/COUNTERPOINT: TWO SPORTS REPORTERS DISCUSS COLLEGE FOOTBALL'S BRAVE NEW WORLD (December 10, 2025)


As of this writing up to 10 college football teams have opted out of bowl games, including national and media - but not committee - darling Notre Dame.

This was a totally foreseeable consequence of going to a formal playoff format, especially more so when they went from four to 12 team, as teams that have a goal of winning a national title don’t want to play a consolation game; doubly so when they feel (rightly or wrongly) snubbed.

The bowl season has been under pressure for a while with players opting out to get ready for the draft, and now with coaches jumping from team to team during the season while their spurned players have lost all motivation to keep going.

Yes, the number of bowls have gotten out of hand - nobody but a few die-hard alumni that want a reason to tailgate one more time want to watch two 6-6 teams play in the ‘our company won’t be around this time next year’ bowl at 11 a.m. on December 27 - but bowls are what make college football unique.

Everybody gets their own ‘title’ game, teams that aren’t the champions can end things on a high note, and bowls are a part of the college life experience that goes beyond the football team to the band, cheerleaders, and student body.

Is this the end of that college experience?

BRIAN FEES: It definitely feels like the college experience is dying, or at least drastically changing.

Sure, many bowl games always felt like a bit of a consolation prize, but some of those obscure bowl games became must watch TV. Who doesn’t remember tuning into the Idaho Potato Bowl to watch teams play on the ‘Smurf Turf.’

The other thing was, bowl games used to be a good chance for athletes to star on a big stage. It was a chance to make a name for yourself and maybe open up the eyes of some pro scouts. I’m sure all the Northern Tier readers remember Ethan Kilmer’s performance in the Orange Bowl for Penn State. He legit was a candidate for the game’s MVP, catching six passes for 79 yards and a touchdown. You have to feel like that bowl game certainly boosted his draft stock a little bit that year.

The bowl games also gave college football an identity. Where else can you watch a fan base travel across the country and go insane for a game that meant the world to them, even if the rest of the world won’t ever really remember who won the game?

Now, things are different. College football is starting to resemble a minor league system for the NFL. Could you even imagine 30 years ago a school like Notre Dame telling their seniors, sorry, season is over, we won’t accept a New Years Eve game, because we aren’t playing for a title?

Sooner than later we are going to expand the playoffs again and I think many of these bowl games will go the way of many of those companies you mentioned that sponsored the games. And, honestly, there is little schools can do. Between guys choosing to sit out bowl games to prepare for the draft, and others sitting out as they enter the transfer portal, schools have a hard time even fielding a roster for these games.

It’s already been happening a lot in college basketball. The NIT Tournament is close to asking high school teams to participate with so many schools choosing to decline the invitation. As a St. Bonaventure graduate I never imagined they would turn down any type of postseason game, but they turned down an NIT invite a couple years ago, because the portal had them with very few players who were even interested in continuing the season.

That’s just going to happen more and more in football. Unless something changes the bowl games are soon going to be schools like Kent State and Buffalo, rather than Penn State and Notre Dame.

CHRIS MANNING: Kent State vs. Buffalo in the Lake Effect Snow Bowl actually sounds pretty good right about now.

But I think you describing College Football as a minor league NFL is getting on point with what’s happening in sports right now - the expanding of playoffs.

The bowl games were what separated college from the NFL, now they’re playing on NFL’s turf. When they went to a 4-team playoff I said better make it eight because, at the time, there were five major conferences - all five conference champs earn the first five seeds then you have three at-large bids.

Conference championships still mean something - it certainly didn’t look like it meant much to Ohio State - but teams that go undefeated in the regular season but didn’t take care of business in the conference championship still get in.

I still feel that would be the best model.

However, the NCAA jumped to 12 which leads to situations like Notre Dame now. Honestly, if you have two losses you shouldn’t be in the running for a National Championship unless it’s a very wonky year.

Now there’s talk of going to 32 teams, and tell me how does Indiana playing the fifth best team out of the Big 12 make the situation better? Why are they adding three more rounds after a 10-11 game season? Does a 7-5 team really deserve a shot at a national title?

The whole point of the regular season is to weed out teams that shouldn’t be in this situation, and now they are cheapening it even more.

You look across the sporting landscape and the playoffs keep getting bigger - NBA added play-in games, MLB and NFL added to the wildcards, the NCAA Basketball Tournament went from 64 to 68 teams last decade - and it looks like College Football will be joining them.

In the NBA play-in games have been exciting, but they’ve also added the NBA Cup to give teams something else to shoot for during the season, and that gets at the heart of what’s happening today - the obsession with titles.

Everything people use to judge sports comes down to titles to the point where seasons are zero-sum - you either win the championship or you’re a loser.

And that’s dubious at best, and intellectually lazy at worst. You as well as I know that every year is different - the fourth or fifth best team in one season might coast to a title two years later.

But with how society is now, that there is only one measure for success, and only one team can earn it. I’m not surprised bowls have lost their relevance.

BRIAN FEES: If we go to 16, or even 32 teams, that basically becomes our bowl games. Aren’t you dying to see Duke against Illinois in a playoff game? Honestly, how is that any different from the ‘we paid too much money to sponsor this and are now bankrupt’ bowl?

Look at this year’s playoff bracket. Tulane and James Madison are both in the field. I get it, we do want to allow smaller schools a chance. But, Tulane lost to Ole Miss this year 45-10. James Madison lost to Louisville 28-14. Tulane gets to play Ole Miss again in the first playoff game, and James Madison takes on Oregon. Does anyone really think that the Tulane/Ole Miss matchup will be closer this time around? Oregon is a 21-point favorite over James Madison.

The problem for college football is there is a Grand Canyon sized gap between the top teams and everyone else.

It’s fun to say let’s give the small guys a chance to play cinderella. And, that works in other sports. In basketball someone can get hot from three and steal a game. But, that’s so much harder in football. How often is a team like James Madison, who has sent under 30 players all-time to the NFL, going to be able to compete with Ohio State, who sent 14 to the NFL last year, and will have more guys going to the NFL in a two-year span than James Madison has had in their history?

The reality is it makes no sense to put 32 teams into a field when maybe seven or eight most years have a legit chance to compete for a title.

The way we are going, how soon is it before guys start opting out before playoff games? I mean you already had Lane Kiffin take a new job and won’t coach in the playoff. You have had backups, and role players, like Penn State backup QB Beau Pribula leave the program and enter the transfer portal before the playoffs.

But, we are getting to a point where if you have 32 teams guys will say, no, I’m not playing an extra six games, I’m getting ready for the draft, and they will just step away from their team.

I hope the sport stays at 12, or at least stops at 16. 32 teams just seems wild, and do we really want college football playoffs to take two months?

CHRIS MANNING: The mantra across all sports seems to be extending seasons. So what if College Football doesn’t end until late February, the NFL will just push the Super Bowl to March with a 24 week regular season.

As always it comes down to money and how much water they can extract from a stone. And it’s only going to get worse, now, with private equity throwing their cash into the mix (see Utah).

I’m sure Otro Capital has Utah’s best interests at heart.

But, time marches on and this is the way things are marching, so how do we make the best of a bad situation?

Maybe start by not letting coaches enter into negotiations with new schools until mid-January. Anybody who breaks that rule has to sit out of coaching for a year, or, at least, no postseason.

Then hire the players to contracts, like three years for three million. They can leave after one year, but forfeit the other two million - that might protect the programs from themselves.

A cap wouldn’t hurt, either, but there’s going to be a lot of pushback on that from deep pocketed teams, and the players who stand to make the most from said deep pocketed teams.

As for the playoffs, maybe 16 will be College Football’s first good faith effort at this.

The four team playoff was destined to fail with five power conferences, and 12 (really 10 with the smaller conference schools added) seems set up to cause this type of controversy that will give them the momentum they need to up the ante.

With two (real) power conferences in the Big Ten and SEC, and two (not so real) power conferences in the ACC and Big 12, getting 14 spots instead of 10 might be enough to keep the belly aching down.

There’s always going to be those who cry foul, but how much are people going to listen to a team that was fifth in their conference?

With this getting behind us we finally start to focus on the real juicy story - the potential split between Notre Dame and the ACC.

I heard a rumor (started by me) that the Big Ten is going to swoop in and add the Fightin’ Irish, thus creating an even more power gap between the haves, the have-somes, and have-nots.

BRIAN FEES: I mean, in this world of sports you are as good of a source for a rumor as any other out there. I’m pretty sure half the rumors are the coaches, brothers, maid’s cousins, barber’s eighth-cousin once removed heard a guy at a bar tell them that Marcus Freeman is going to leave Notre Dame to coach Toledo. 

Like you said, you can’t change the route sports are going, you just have to make the best of it. I think the first big step is going to be changing some of the timelines. If they want coaches to wait until January to take new jobs, they really need to change the signing dates, and the portal window dates. You can’t wait on your new coach until January with the schedule the way it is. You would be so far behind the curve it might take years to recover.

Look at Penn State. They didn’t make their hire quickly and now this year’s recruiting class is a mess. Meanwhile Virginia Tech was aggressive, hired James Franklin quickly and he was able to poach half of Penn State’s recruiting class. 

I’d love to be able to say what Lane Kiffin did was horrible. And, let’s be fair the way he handles everything is always sketchy. But, LSU needed an answer. They couldn’t wait until after the playoffs. By then most top high school players would be committed and half their roster might enter the portal. 

And, as I mentioned before with Pribula leaving Penn State before last year’s playoffs. Honestly, you can’t blame him. It’s the system. If he stays at Penn State through the playoffs there is a good chance most teams would have already filled their QB spot. So, he hit the portal, found a home at Missouri and had a nice season before getting hurt. 

Right now, the system is set up to force people to make coaching hires in season. It’s set up to have guys entering the porgal leave their team before the playoffs. And, honestly it’s set up. to make hiring any coach in the playoffs tough. That’s great for the schools in the playoffs, not so great for the coaches. Curt Cignetti already committed to staying at Indiana. But, if he hadn’t, it would have been hard for teams to pursue him knowing they may have to wait until January. And, that can cost a coach a ton of money if you get a bidding war for your services. 

I think sooner or later the college football calendar has to change. If you get rid of the early signing day, except for guys enrolling in January, and push back the portal window then school’s won’t feel the need to jump and hire people quickly. And, that’s good all the way around. It would mean less situations like Kiffin leaving before the playoffs, and less of school’s rushing to hire someone as fast as possible. And, it means any coach, even on playoff teams, can be on the table for job openings. Which, hopefully means schools can be more thorough and hire the right guy, so they aren’t just hiring someone and then three years later aren’t giving them like $75 trillion, six private islands and a quarter of the land on campus to go away. 

Only time will tell what the NCAA does. Trying to predict their next move is like trying to pick the winning lottery numbers every week of the year. 

For now, it’s football time. I for one can’t wait to watch the three minute game between Oregon and James Madison. Or at least three minutes feels like how long it will take Oregon to be up double digits. 

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