SALT LAKE CITY — Bowl games aren’t what they used to be. Consider Utah State.
The Aggies trudged to 7-5 this season, far short of the Mountain West title they had their eyes on but still good enough to meet Kent State in the Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl.
Thirty years ago, that record would have landed them a spot on the couch.
USU plays the Golden Flashes in a 20,500-seat soccer stadium in Frisco, Texas, Friday, the inaugural day of college football’s bowl season — a tradition that seems to get more odd and less consequential each year.
Bowl games were once rare and regal. It seems quaint now: so few games; such simple, regional, earthen names. Bowls were a prestigious invitation, a rare chance for unexpected matchups, and the last, best chance for national championship contenders to make their case to voters.
In 1977, there were just 13 bowl games. Brigham Young University went 9-2, ranked 16th in the coaches’ poll, and got bupkis. There were five more bowls by 1984, when a win in the Holiday Bowl — one of the new additions — launched undefeated BYU to the national title.
This year, bowl season boasts 39 games, from the SoFi Hawaii Bowl in Honolulu to the Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl in Nassau. A total of 79 schools qualified for 78 bowl slots. Only 6-6 Toledo was left out. Only two — the Playstation Fiesta Bowl and the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl, which are part of the playoff — have national title ramifications.
The traditional, regional games that once dominated the bowl landscape, meanwhile, have devolved into corporate absurdity, embraced as much for their strange sponsorships — NOVA Home Loans and Cheribundi Tart Cherry among them — as for their showcases of football.
So why play these games at all? Schools benefit from conference payouts. Coaches earn bonuses, get their underclassmen experience under the national spotlight, and pocket a potent recruiting tool. And since bowl season overlaps the holidays, it’s a great time for college football fans with little else to watch on TV.
So the Aggies might be disappointed that they’re not playing in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl, where instead Memphis will face Penn State. But to the players, the Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl — and quiet hopes for a future fueled by free smoothies, a reward unconfirmed as of this writing — is no joke.
“I was hoping we’d get a year’s supply of some free stuff,” linebacker Kevin Meitzenheimer said. “Hopefully there’s a Kentucky Fried Chicken Bowl that we’re able to attend next year. As long as they give us some of that quirky-named food, I’ll be alright.”
Until that fast-food dream comes true, it’s worth examining what’s been lost — and, perhaps, gained — in the bowl boom, and why some are calling it a bubble.
A brief history of bowls and sponsorship
If there was a turning point in the bowl system, it may be its most ridiculous game. In 1991, the Independence Bowl, played in Shreveport, Louisiana, became the Poulan-Weed Eater Independence Bowl.
There were 18 bowls that year. Some had begun taking on corporate title sponsors — like in 1986 when Jacksonville’s Gator Bowl became the Mazda Gator Bowl. Some others had dropped their original names entirely, with the Sun Bowl becoming the John Hancock Bowl in ‘87. (That game is now called the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl.) But what people started calling the “weed whacker bowl” unleashed a new era of possibilities.
“It was both an insipid tipping point and a brilliant evolution in sports marketing,” journalist Michael Weinreb wrote in The Athletic, “a movement that launched a million jokes and may or may not have moved some garden tools along the way.”
Since then, unusual title sponsors have become the norm. There’s the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl and the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl; 2015 gave us the BattleFrog Fiesta Bowl; and of course, there’s the spiritual successor to the original weed whacker bowl: the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl, where pregame festivities have included sponsored races on riding mowers.
The phenomenon even invited attention from Saturday Night Live, which devised a skit of absurd sponsorship combinations including the “Phantom Menace in 3-D Radio Shack Croissant Bowl.”
Bowl games do have their limits, though. The Independence Bowl has been sponsored by the energy company PetroSun, the nutritional supplement AdvoCare V100, and Duck Commander, a hunting equipment manufacturer operated by the family featured in A&E’s “Duck Dynasty.” But in 2005, when a chain of gentlemen’s clubs offered to sponsor the Independence Bowl, the bowl’s director declined the club’s offer, saying the two entities had “no compatibility.”
The business of bowls
Bowl games offer TV networks, fans and sponsors a valuable antidote to the hellscape of daytime television that would otherwise dominate the holiday season.
The triad of bored fans off work, networks looking to fill programming slots and advertisers seeking as many eyeballs as possible forms the basis for a profitable venture. But how does it work? Let’s start with the sponsors.
Why do companies believe such investments — which can range from around $250,000 for smaller bowls to $600,000 for mid-tier bowls to $20 million-plus for big-time bowls — are worthwhile? If they’re smart, said Engage Marketing Chief Engagement Officer Kevin Adler, there can be many reasons. Bowl sponsorships can be used to promote brand awareness or convince new consumers to try a product. The games themselves offer a stage where companies can schmooze potential distributors or business partners.
“The brands that use these most effectively are the ones that sort of pull all the levers,” he said.
But he added there’s no reliable way to define which companies are a good fit.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” said Eric Schulz, a senior lecturer in Utah State’s marketing and strategy department. “Literally.”
Outback Steakhouse, for example, has had a strong run with the Outback Bowl. Since 1996, the game that was once known as the Hall of Fame Bowl has become a New Year’s Day staple. The BattleFrog Fiesta Bowl, meanwhile, fizzled after one year and its titular sponsor, a company that designed and curated recreational obstacle courses, has since gone out of business.
Bowl games used to court their own sponsors. And in some cases, said Sam Starks — who started his career in the bowl business but is now with Rollins College in Orlando, Florida — they still do. But nowadays, their partner television network — often ESPN, which owns and operates 14 bowl games outright — tends to do that legwork.
That brings us to the next component in bowl game financials: TV networks.
If they don’t own the game, TV networks pay a fee to the bowl’s management organization for broadcasting rights. The networks profit by selling advertising during the game. This is why ESPN owns 14 games, including the Academy Sports + Outdoors Texas Bowl and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl: it gives the network strong programming during a slow time for sports.
In addition to broadcast rights and sponsorships, bowl committees also make money from ticket sales (schools are forced to buy a certain number of tickets for resale) and by hosting pregame events like lunches and golf tournaments.
Participating schools’ conferences also get a payout, which is divided up between the conference’s members. And schools can cash in on ticket resale, though they can also lose money if they overestimate their fans’ willingness to travel.
The amounts fluctuate for all parties depending on the game.
“If a bowl in Albuquerque makes $100,000, that might be great,” Starks said. “If the Sugar Bowl makes $100,000, that’s terrible.”
It’s a somewhat unpredictable calculus. That is, except for one group of stakeholders that is always guaranteed almost nothing.
Bowl game players
In recent years, top players on their way to the NFL have started opting out of bowl games. They’re far from a majority, but why would anyone wish to miss out?
One reason: They’d be playing for free (as usual).
Players do usually receive gifts for attending. Utah State has been promised cowboy hats for the Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl, for example, which most players appreciate. They also get a trip with free meals and lodging, whether to Boise or the Bahamas.
Another reason: They’d be risking an injury that could hurt their professional future. So some players prefer diving straight into professional preparation.
This phenomenon isn’t limited to fringe bowls: Florida Gators cornerback CJ Henderson, a junior, announced earlier this month he’s leaving school to pursue the NFL draft, opting to forego the team’s trip to the Orange Bowl, which happens to be played in his hometown.
In this sense, the bowl system is a microcosm of college football’s economy. “This is a total business,” said former LSU coach and current Big 10 Network analyst Gerry DiNardo. “And this is why players want” better transfer options, more payment options, etc.
To DiNardo, who coached LSU in the 1995 Poulan-Weed Eater Independence Bowl, the proliferation of tacky sponsorship makes this reality painfully clear.
“This is a financial enterprise,” he said. “It’s no longer an educational enterprise.”
But the absurdity of today’s bowl system does carry a certain charm, especially for bowl game rookies or for seniors playing their last games. DiNardo’s LSU team that played in the 1995 weed whacker bowl hadn’t made a bowl game in six years. Even if it had a ridiculous sponsor, the team didn’t care.
Nor does Utah State’s senior kicker Dominik Eberle as his team nears the smoothie bowl.
“Free smoothies, baby,” Eberle said. “I love myself some free smoothies.”
He wasn’t alone.
“The Tropical Smoothie Bowl sounds way better than the Potato Bowl,” redshirt junior linebacker Eric Munoz added, “so we’re excited about that.”
The cheapening
Bowl season has undeniably lost some gravity.
Back in the 1980s, any major bowl game — like the 1984 Holiday Bowl — had the potential to determine a champion. Most bowls featured a pair of elite teams. Even as the number of bowls has skyrocketed, the BCS and College Football Playoff have overtaken the whole system in title relevance. The result is inevitably watered down.
And more changes are likely on the way.
With the College Football Playoff likely poised for expansion, and players demanding more financially, the future of the bowl system is clouded.
“The bigger question is,” Weinreb said, “are we in a bowl bubble right now?”
The bowl system has seen bubbles before. Twelve new bowl games were introduced in the 1940s; nine vanished within five years. But the number of games added to the calendar in each decade steadily increased from there, culminating in 15 new games in the 2000s.
Just 10 bowl games were added in the 2010s, the first decade since the 1950s that the number of additions dropped. The market may not be crashing, but it could plateau.
“I don’t see a de-escalation of bowls,” Schulz said, “but we might be getting close to saturation.”
One example of how saturation looks might be the Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl, played Friday at noon MST in the Bahamian capital of Nassau. It’ll feature a pair of 7-5 teams in Buffalo and Charlotte. And the name itself invites questions.
Makers Wanted is the slogan of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. The Chicago suburb prides itself on its business-friendly nature and large industrial park, and it wants people to know about it.
Consider the benefits for the teams — a free holiday trip to the Bahamas — and ESPN — watchable programming that’s more profitable than bowling or darts.
Consider, too, the sponsor. Consider how a suburban Chicago municipality has slapped its catchphrase onto a football game over 1,500 miles away in an island nation. Consider that without this sponsorship, the Bahamas Bowl would struggle to exist.
Put them together, and you might understand how such an absurd system has flourished. Or you might not.