http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootbal ... ligibility

I would favor reducing the number of bowl games played and requiring teams to go 7-5 or better. Not so sure that ESPN would favor removing those extra games though.

I wouldn't mind a cut down on the bowls if and only if they come at the expense of the bigger conferences. like the pac 12 #8 or the SEC #9. With the addition of 4 more upgrades starting this football season i don't mind have 30 bowls. allow 6 -6 teams to be bowl eligible but force at large bids to take the higher winning teams. Like western Kentucky was 7-5 and weren't picked.

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I will never understand why people want to have less football played,

I agree with you to a point. While I would love to have college football on every Friday and Saturday night, I can't stand the weak bowl matchups. I understand their position on getting as many kids as possible the opportunity to play in a bowl game which has merits of its own. I myself played an NCAA sport, and I wanted our conference's tournament to expand from 6 teams to 8 teams (out of 14) because we finished 7th or 8th each year I played, so I know the kids want to play in a bowl game. To me, however, the 35+ bowl games diminishes what the teams with better records were able to do on the field. Same reason why the conference I played in didn't expand the playoffs to 8 when our conference expanded to 14. It's college athletics, not youth or recreational. I personally would like to see 15-20 bowls (30-40 teams), but with the way money is made on bowl games, that won't happen.

Did you watch the AdvoCare V100 Bowl (Independence Bowl in Shreveport which at least has Casinos if nothing else), Little Cesars Bowl (Motor City Bowl aka Cold Bowl), BBVA Compass Bowl (old PapaJohns.com Bowl aka Birmingham Bowl...who want to going bowling there?) New Mexico Bowl (Sun Bowl's poor cousin), Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (old Emerald Bowl), Heart of Dallas Bowl (Old Cotton Bowl), R&L Carriers Bowl (New Orleans Bowl aka not the Sugar Bowl), Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (Boise Bowl), Beef O Brady Bowl (St Pete's Bowl aka not the outback bowl), or the GoDaddy.com Bowl (GMAC Bowl aka the Mobile Alabama Bowl...that's right, another Bowl in Bama)?

Well if you did good for you, but most people don't, and most big time programs in the AQs don't want to play in them...the link does a good job of spelling out why. It's simple supply/demand, right now there are so many bowls that even respectable ones like the Gator, Holiday, or Alamo don't get the ratings they deserve. Give everyone the extra weeks of practice time and raise the requirement to 7 wins to be bowl eligible (with possible exemptions for the academies).

And FYI I'm giving the Military and Armed Forces Bowls a pass here due to their tie-ins with the Academies but even they don't pull in an audience.

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Fan of the Big 12 Conference, the Mountain West Conference and...

The smaller FBS conferences are creating four NEW bowls for next year.

Montgomery AL (Camellia Bowl)
Bahamas Bowl
Miami Bowl (Marlins stadium, not Dolphins)
Boca Raton Bowl (Florida Atlantic U stadium)

We can argue whether more bowls is a bad thing. However, between following @EmptySeatsPics and some of the stories I see from elsewhere, thank your lucky ESPNs that half these bowls aren't folding after this year. I think we've reached the saturation point regarding the television "density" of these games... and I think large swaths of football fans are done with the notion of traveling to them.

There's a problem here.

The problem here is that the Power 5 schools will not play the Go5 conferences in Bowl games. So the Go5 have to start there own just to be able to get their programs with winning records to the post season. 8-4 and 7-5 Go5 schools are being left out of the bowl season while 6-6 teams in the P5 are getting in with the 10th or 11th or 12th post season tie in. That is crazy while a team that finishes 8-4 in a conference like the SBC can't even go to a bowl. That is the problem.

Blame the greedy P5 conference that want to destroy football as well know it. Everyone says that the Go5 can't compete, that they don't have the money. Well lets go back a decade. These now P5 schools weren't so powerful then. What changed (money from TV contract's and expansion). The P5 conferences took the best of the non-P5 and improved their own net worth. ESPN and other TV providers signed TV deals and then started promoting this power 5 schools over the others. It continues today. CBSSports has a contract with C-USA, and last night following their College Football live show on CBSsports there was a C-USA conference game, but instead of talking about that game, they wanted to talk about the P5 schools and even the game on ESPN between Houston and BYU. How does this help C-USA. How does promoting the ESPN game help CBSsports generate viewers for their game on their station? Crazy! With a little bit of that money from the TV contract and better promotion schools like Ark. St., NIU, ULL, ECU, Fresno St, etc, could get the last few players needed to not only compete but win against these Power 5 schools. Then you would see a change. But that is not going to happen as long as the Power 5 gets their way. Which is why they want the Autonym.

I don't agree. I can not understand, why people want less players in the team.\?

Do we need 35-40 bowl games ? Face it, after 10 or so bowl games, the reminader are pretty lame...

I might watch the games that have bearing on the final rankings up at the top, the rest are just TV "filler" material.

We now have 3 "must-see games" (the 2 semi-fianls and the NCG).
I'd be fore expanding the College Football Playoff to not just 8 teams, but 16 teams.
That'd be 7 or 15 MEANINGFUL games.

Otherwise you have a whole lot of 8-4 vs. 7-5 teams playing far from their home cities, and it just beges the question "WHY ?"

The empty seats are real. There is little passion for these games.
Why are we getting more, rather than less of them, if nobody attends these games ?

Here is your answer.... ESPN needs "content", any kind of sports to fill up air time over the holidays, when you have a lot of couch-potato eyeballs available who will watch anything.
So ESPN has taken ownership of many of these bowl games. Economically, it still works for ESPN, even if they sell no tickets whatsoever.... It's all about TV.
They can give each school about $100,000 to transport their team and band down to the bowl game and put them up in a hotel for 2 nights.
ESPN can then sell a bunch of commercial time (and I believe they give some free commerical time to corporations that help to "Sponsor" the game).
And they now have programming for that 2-5 pm slot on Wednesday, December 29th, when there are a goodly number of college football fans sitting at home over XMAS-New Years break.
The games end up being rather meaningless, but hey, maybe this ESPN-owned bowl concept is a win-win for a lot of people.

It's provided bowl opportunities for a lotof G5 schools who don't travel well, and therefore aren't attractive to the better-known bowl games that want to see
a lot of ticket sales and hotel room bookings.

Personally I view these games as "mildly entertaining" or "background noise".

The TV industry knows that even bowl games between the #3 SEC team and the #2 ACC team aren't all THAT meaningful, although they tend to be high-quality football and much more watchable.
But from a marketing perspective, if you held a 16-team playoff, you would have 15 all-or-nothing elimination games that would command TV audiences (and advertising revenue)
more along the lines of the NFL playoffs. The viewing audience would far prefer that, than the current rather random "Outback Bowl" match-ups, and the TV networks like ESPN will be dangling big bucks in front of the CFP powers-that-be,
once we see the Nielsen ratings for this 4-team playoff. This 4-team playoff is set up for the next 12-years, but there would seem to be an oppotunity to alter it after 6 years, when all the bowls have been through one complete rotation.
Money talks, just ask any of those P5 conference commissioners.....

If and when the playoff is expanded to 8 teams I think you will see some of the bowls disappear. Not many but a few. More than likely it will be the bowl games that match up the 8-10 seed P5 schools against the 1-2 seed Go5 schools. But until then I don't see fewer, if anything there will be more over the next few years. The Go5 will add more amongst themselves so that they can offer more post season for their schools as well they should. There is no way the Go5 will ever get a team into the playoff as it is now, and more than likely wont get one in if the playoff is expanded unless there is a guarantee that the highest rated champion gets into the playoff.

I fully expect the playoff to go from 4 to 8 teams after the first 6 year cycle is competed. Television money talks. Modifying the system will give ESPN, or whomever wins the contract, an additional weekend of big bowl games and high Nielsen ratings. The bowls who host schools #9-#16 will still wind up as filler programing around New Years and the evenings leading up to it. You hit the nail on the head--the elimination game atmosphere will drive up ratings. Fans who have a team in the playoffs will have a vested interest in watching all the games because they will want to see the teams that their school will be facing in the next round.

Would a 12 team tournament work? the top 4 teams get a round bye.(done how it is now and most likely be a power 5 school) Every conference champion gets a bid(must have a conference championship game) The higher seeded teams host the game(placements would be based on geography) A sun belt team would most likely play the big 12, Pac 12 would play the mountain west and so on. The only time it wouldn't work like that is if they get a team in the top 4.

In the first round the 4 top ranked champions host the 2 lower champions and the 2 at large berth teams at home.(In theory a mountain west team could host a big 12 team if the mountain west average ranking is better) The winners go to the top 4 teams(who got the bye) home field for a game next week(maybe 2) then the winners go to a new years bowl and then the championship game a week after.

The bowls could play during the week. Tuesday thru Friday,so they wouldn't go against Monday night football. there could be a cap at lets say 5 teams per conference going to a bowl(playoffs don't count) So a conference could get 7 teams in the postseason(2 teams in the playoffs and 5 teams in the bowls) Maybe have the bowls become more regional would help. Lets say force 1 bowl to have a Pac 12 vs Mountain west or a SEC vs c-USA and so on. What are your guys thoughts on this?

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It is fun to talk about the playoff expanding but I don't see it really happening until the 12 year deal is over and then I see it going to 8 max. Reason for 8 max would be, the P5 conferences do not want to expanded the playoff for more Go5 schools they want to expand for themselves. 8 would be a compromise that would work just like this current deal did when they threw the Go5 a bone with the guaranteed big bowl bid. This way they eliminate the big bowls by adding them all into the playoff format. The Go5 highest rated champion gets a automatic bid into the playoff and then the conference champs from all 5 P5 conferences get in, then top 2 at large bids. I don't see going beyond 8 team playoff. The FBS already play one more regular season game then the FCS schools do. Reason is that the FCS have a 24 team playoff which takes more weeks to complete. If the FBS were to go beyond the 8 they would have to look at cutting a regular season game. I don't see that happening. Also there would have to be a divisional breakaway to have more playoff format. Currently it is the FBS (BOWL SUBDIVISION) and FCS (CHAMPIONSHIP SUBDIVISION w/ playoff). If they keep expanding the FBS with playoff then it the number of bowl games go down. So name change would have to take place and go back to D-1a and D-1aa or either a D-1 breakaway with all 10 FBS conferences.

A: I don't see the playoff going to 8 as the presidents/ADs and the pressure surrounding student athletes (especially in fb) will be against it despite what fans/networks want. The next version of the playoff will most likely include only the champs of the 4 power conferences which all have a CCG that acts as the round of 8 giving fans a defacto 8 team playoff (only without Go5 or at large bids). This will "improve" the process as no committee be involved. I know that's not a popular view around here but it seems to satisfy all the power players except the SEC-West.

B: I disagree on disappearing bowls for the P5. The P5 if anything may contract out more bowls to give everyone a bowl game as it'll give everyone the extra practice time and be a roundabout way to give the athletes more $$$. The top Go5 team of the year may eventually drop from all non playoff/elite level access bowls and form their own championship (they could have a regular season #1 that get the at large Go5 bid to the access bowl, and then a tournament #1 for their own team playoff) but I doubt they'll ever decide that bowls aren't worth it and just decide to stay home. The bowl structure as we know it will likely be the next thing to change as the P5 are beginning to realize that letting 3rd parties own/operate their post season isn't the most efficient way to control the costs associated with bowl games.

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Fan of the Big 12 Conference, the Mountain West Conference and...