The College Football Bowl Season Is Dead: Long Live the CFP Cash Grab
Let’s just get straight to the point, shall we? The college football bowl season, the thing we all used to love for its quirky matchups and bizarre sponsorships, is officially on life support. The 2025-26 schedule, which kicked off on December 13th, is nothing more than a glorified series of exhibitions leading up to the real show. We’re watching a spectacle that pretends to be significant, but everyone knows the true stakes have moved on. The expanded College Football Playoff has fundamentally altered the DNA of the sport, turning what was once a celebration of tradition into a cynical pursuit of profit. The data from the schedule shows a complete shift in focus, prioritizing the playoff matchups over everything else, and leaving the rest of the bowl games to wither on the vine.
You see headlines about MVPs and best bets, but let’s be real for a minute. When a guy like Caden Fordham makes his mark in a game that barely registers on the national radar, we have to ask: what does ‘making his mark’ even mean in this new landscape? Is it a genuine achievement or just a footnote in a sport obsessed with a small handful of power programs? The bowl season used to be where legends were born, where an underdog team from a non-Power Five conference could pull off a miracle and gain national attention. Now, it’s where players protect their draft stock by opting out, where coaches are already packing for a new job, and where the primary motivation isn’t pride, but rather a final chance to impress scouts or snag some extra NIL cash before hitting the transfer portal. The 2025-26 schedule is full of these games—thirty-something opportunities for teams that didn’t quite make the cut for the real prize to play a game that feels, frankly, meaningless to the larger conversation. This isn’t college football; it’s a professional minor league trying to find its footing, and a lot of these smaller bowls are just glorified practice sessions for the big leagues.
The December Purge: When Hope Dies Early
The early-season bowls, starting in mid-December, are where the rot truly sets in. The source data mentions the season beginning on December 13th, and let’s face it, a lot of these early games feature teams that have completely checked out mentally, or whose entire coaching staff is already gone. You see matchups between 6-6 teams from conferences that barely register on the East Coast, all battling for a trophy that looks like something you’d win at a bowling league. The energy is gone, the stadiums are half-empty, and the only real excitement comes from trying to figure out which players decided to actually show up for the game. This isn’t about tradition or school spirit; it’s about fulfilling contractual obligations to ESPN and television networks. The players, bless their hearts, are trying their best, but they know exactly where they stand in the pecking order. The real excitement, the real money, and the real attention are all reserved for the expanded playoffs. The rest of the schedule is just background noise. The idea of ‘best bets’ for these games feels like putting money on a coin toss when both sides are already worn down and faded. What’s the point of analyzing these odds when player availability changes by the hour as guys decide to jump ship for the transfer portal?
The College Football Playoff has expanded to 12 teams, and that’s the real game changer. The source data mentions the “matchups for Round 1 of the College” Playoff, which is exactly where all the attention is focused. The traditional bowl games like the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl are no longer sacred institutions; they are now just venues in a rotation for the first round or quarter-finals. This expansion, while creating more opportunities for teams to compete for the national title, simultaneously stripped away the unique identity of nearly every other bowl game. We used to have debates about which bowl game was more prestigious—the Rose Bowl or the Sugar Bowl? Now, it’s just a question of which one gets to host a playoff game this year. The non-playoff bowls are left scrambling for scraps, trying to find a compelling angle when the truly great teams are elsewhere. The narrative has completely shifted from ‘making it to a bowl game’ to ‘making it into the playoff.’ Everything else is just padding. This new structure is designed to generate maximum revenue, and tradition be damned.
The Transfer Portal and NIL: A Recipe for Chaos
Here’s where the human drama, the messy part that makes for good tabloid fodder, really comes in: The transfer portal and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) money. The bowl season, especially in the 2025-26 calendar, has become Ground Zero for players making career-defining choices. When a player has to choose between playing in a minor bowl game for pride and entering the transfer portal to secure a better deal at a powerhouse school, which one do you think they’ll choose? The money, obviously. The NIL contracts are massive, and players are essentially free agents. This turns bowl season into a high-stakes auction, not a high-stakes competition. The teams playing in these games are often shells of their regular-season selves. How can we possibly evaluate the integrity of a matchup when half the starters are sitting out to protect their bodies for the NFL Draft? The source data talks about “Best bets for every bowl game,” but honestly, the best bet is probably to assume that half the players won’t be there and that a team’s performance will depend entirely on which backups decide to step up. This creates a level of unpredictability that is exciting for gamblers but disastrous for fans who value the integrity of the game. It’s a complete and utter mess, and it’s getting worse every year.
Let’s talk about Caden Fordham’s MVP award. While a personal highlight for him, it also highlights the problem with the current system. In the old days, a minor bowl MVP could launch a player’s career, giving him a spotlight he wouldn’t otherwise get. Now, it’s a nice story, but does it truly matter? The power programs are already focused on the playoff teams, and the money is flowing to the big names. A great performance in a lesser bowl is just a blip on the radar for most fans. The new college football landscape is all about consolidation of power. The expanded CFP ensures that a few select teams will dominate the conversation, and everyone else is just fighting for scraps. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing from a business perspective—it makes the playoff games incredibly lucrative—but it completely guts the soul of the sport. The idea of a magical bowl run for a smaller conference team is almost entirely gone.
What’s Next? A Broken System and a Bleak Future
The 2025-26 season is a transition point. We’re moving away from a traditional season where bowls were the reward for a job well done to a system where everything revolves around the playoff bracket. The new first-round matchups are where all the focus will be. The traditional bowls, like the Rose Bowl, are being forced to adapt to a new reality where they no longer define the end of the season. They are now just steps in a larger tournament. This shift in power dynamics means that the regular season has become less about winning games and more about positioning oneself for the playoff. This has already changed how teams approach their schedule and how coaches recruit players. The value of a perfect regular season for a non-playoff team is drastically diminished when compared to the value of winning a spot in the expanded playoff. The source data confirms this focus on the playoffs by mentioning the new first round matchups, signaling that this is where the money and attention are going. The rest of the bowls are just collateral damage.
The current state of affairs is a result of a system that prioritizes television revenue and corporate sponsorships over the long-standing traditions of college sports. The 2025-26 bowl schedule is a monument to this change. We are watching the slow, agonizing death of what made college football unique. The passion and pageantry of bowl season are being replaced by the cold, calculated professionalism of a professional league. The expanded playoff is good for the big schools and bad for the rest of college football. The future of college football will be dictated by NIL money and playoff rankings, not by traditional rivalries or memorable bowl games. We’re in for a rough ride, folks, because the soul of college football is currently being auctioned off to the highest bidder, and the 2025-26 bowl schedule is just a grim reminder of that reality. The games are still happening, sure, but the heart has gone out of them. The MVP awards? Just a footnote in a larger, greed-driven narrative. Let’s call a spade a spade: spade. This isn’t college football; it’s a business venture. The 2025-26 bowl season will simply confirm what we already suspect: the magic is gone, and only the money remains.
