Bowl Game Opt-Outs are a Disgrace to College Football

The moniker Selection Sunday has not followed college basketball to college football, but we received some fallout in an unexpected way once the College Football Playoff committee revealed the final 12 teams for this year’s postseason tournament. Teams elected to opt out of bowl games.

Bowl game opt-outs are nothing new. Christian McCaffrey and Leonard Fournette started the trend for individuals back in 2016. Even though many did not like it, the college football world collectively agreed to accept that players with NFL aspirations have the right to protect themselves by skipping the postseason exhibition. It was the cost of doing business, but business was still booming.

It’s hard to tell how well bowl business is booming after numerous teams elected to forego a bowl game after the 2025 season.

Nine teams opted out of playing in a bowl game. If those nine, six finished with a 5-7 record. Those six are immune to the following critique. After all, six wins is a low bar. I can understand why a program with a losing record wouldn’t want to ruminate on it for another month before going to play in Birmingham.

As for the other three — Kansas State, Iowa State, and Notre Dame — you are all losers, and you deserve to be publicly shamed.

It doesn’t matter that the two Big 12 teams are breaking in new coaches this month; they should be playing in a bowl game. As for Notre Dame, somebody call the whambulance. An opportunity to end the season with a win isn’t the only reason why these teams should be competing one more time.

Bowl Games are Fun

Bowl season has plenty of haters. It has never made any sense to me.

Over the holiday season, your TV screen is filled with games played between teams that never play each other in atypical college football venues. Fenway Park is hosting a game between North Carolina and UConn? Hell yes. A Top 25 matchup in the Cure Bowl between Troy and UTSA? That’s fun football. You mean to tell me that you can play for a chance to eat an enormous Pop-Tart and you’re going to say no? That’s what Notre Dame did.

According to On3’s Brett McMurphy, Notre Dame declined the chance to play BYU in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. These are two teams that had CFP aspirations entering the final weekend of the season. They had a chance to prove with one final performance that they belonged in the field of 12. Instead, Notre Dame chose not to compete. It’s embarrassing.

Mouth Heaven gained another angel! 💙 #PopTartsBowl pic.twitter.com/0hkfozfgjU

— Pop-Tarts Bowl (@PopTartsBowl) December 29, 2024

Bowl Games Make Money

You know what builds championship rosters in college football? Money. You know what happens when you go to a bowl game? You get paid money.

The Big 12 fined 6-6 Kansas State and 8-4 Iowa State for declining invitations to a bowl game. That’s because they lost their conference money.

Either team could have landed in the Alamo Bowl or the Liberty Bowl. The former pays the school’s conference more than $4 million, while the latter gets north of $2 million. That money is split between member schools, but you know who doesn’t have to share that money? An Independent like Notre Dame. The athletic program would rather not play a game than pocket $3 million. It makes no sense.

Players Deserve One More Game

The thing that gets lost in all of this bickering is what these games mean to players. There are guys on the Iowa State roster who earned the right to play one more game. Instead, many of those players will never put on football pads ever again.

Not only have they been robbed of an opportunity to compete one more time, but they are being robbed of an experience. My brother was a walk-on at Western Kentucky. My penny-pinching family will never take a trip to Atlantis, but he got to enjoy a five-day trip to the island resort for the Bahamas Bowl. Players make lifelong memories while preparing and playing in bowl games

“We all have goals and aspirations of winning conference championships and winning national championships, at least we do (at Texas),” said Longhorns’ head coach Steve Sarkisian. “But I also think there’s an experience factor in all this, there’s a growth in all this. There’s development in all this. There’s camaraderie. There’s so much that goes into this that sometimes a bowl game is about celebrating a season and finishing a season the right way.”

Playing college football is not easy. It is a year-long commitment to grind through a season. A bowl game is a fun reward at the end of a hard-fought season, one that should not be taken for granted. Unfortunately, attitudes are changing, and the future of bowl games is in jeopardy.

“The bowl system we know now is officially dead,” a bowl executive told Brett McMurphy. “RIP. It was a nice run while it lasted.”