If you ever thought that there were too many college football bowl games, you are in luck. After a record three teams with losing records made a bowl game last year, no more games will be added for at least the foreseeable future.
ESPN’s Brett McMurphy reported Monday morning that the NCAA had approved a three-year bowl game moratorium. This means that no bowl games will be added to the schedule until after the 2019 regular season at the earliest.
This impacts cities like Austin, Myrtle Beach and Charleston, which were all in the process of possibly adding games for the 2016 season. The Division I council says that they will try to re-evaluate the criteria for teams to make bowl games in order to ensure that the best teams get into the postseason.
The council also stated that they plan to determine whether the minimum requirement of a “deserving” bowl team is a winning record or finishing .500. A bowl moratorium was set in place in 2011, after which six new bowls, not including the College Football Playoff, were added to the already-crowded slate.
The AutoNation Cure Bowl and Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl were both added for the 2015 season and both had controversy surrounding them. The former was the first to feature a team with a 5-7 record, San Jose State, who went on to win the game, and the latter was the first to feature two teams from the same conference, Colorado State and Nevada.
Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson let his feelings about the game between two teams from his conference be known, calling the system “broken” in December.
“There is an excess of bowl games due in part to a disparate allocation of openings vs. conference bowl histories,” Thompson said. “The result is teams with sub-.500 records participating in bowl games. There is consensus change is needed, and this year’s outcome must not be repeated.”
What do you think, fans? Will college football be better with no new bowl games for the next few years? Let us know in the comments below!
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*Featured Photo (above) credit to USA TODAY Sports
