Expanded College Football Playoff is confirmed through 2031, but questions remain about what the rest of the postseason will look like
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The expanded College Football Playoff is set in stone until 2031, but questions remain about what the rest of the postseason will look like.
One thing is for sure: the bowl is still here.
This season, the CFP expanded from four teams to 12 teams. The number of teams could increase to 14 from 2026 at the earliest. Even with a four-team system, the playoffs took away the attention to bowls and sparked a debate about how meaningful bowls were.
While the dozens of bowl games played around Christmas and New Year's still draw plenty of attention for television, player opt-outs are becoming more common.
“I still believe in my heart that kids love to play football,” said Carparelli, who was at a Fiesta Bowl event earlier this week that included the Big 12 and Mountain West Conference meetings. ” he said. “In recent years, they've been given reasons not to do that. And I think that's certainly very unfortunate.”
Capparelli believes the future of college football also includes revenue sharing with players and, in some cases, name, image and likeness compensation agreements with terms similar to professional sports contracts.
“As athlete compensation becomes the norm, I think it is reasonable to expect that at some point there will be some obligation on the part of the student-athlete receiving the compensation to perform their assigned duties,” he said. said. “In my head, it's 12 regular season games, bowl games or playoffs.”
This year, 36 bowl games will be played outside of the College Football Playoff, including four first-round games played on campus.
Carparelli said he doesn't think the six-win minimum for bowl eligibility will change. A determination has not yet been made as to whether three dozen bowl games will be necessary beyond the 2026 season.
Even though Bowls is outside of the playoff picture, there is a contract agreement in place with the conference that runs parallel to CFP's original 12-year contract, which expires after the 2025 season. All of those games are coming up in free agency.
Conferences prefer to secure a large number of bowl partnerships to guarantee qualifying teams a spot in the postseason.
Carparelli wants to increase the flexibility of the bowl selection process, allowing each game to feature attractive matchups against available teams, rather than being tied to predetermined conference contracts. This is similar to how bowls were run 30 to 40 years ago.
“It would be a conference that would have to make that decision,” he said. “Anything is possible. At the highest level, the CFP has decided that there is no certainty that anything other than the five conference champions will be in that system. I don't see why that can't be applied to bowl games at the next level.”
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