Bowl games have been associated with college football for about as long as the sport has been around.

There was a time, before the BCS and the College Football Playoff, when New Year’s Day bowl games actually decided national championships, but those days are long gone.

With the advent of the playoff, most bowl games are now an afterthought. With each passing season, the biggest storylines surrounding bowls not associated with the playoff centered around which players were opting out and which players had decided to actually play.

Less than one hour after it was announced that Clemson would be facing Penn State in the Pinstripe Bowl on December 27, those were the kind of discussions being had on social media. How many opt-outs will the Tigers have?

However, when scanning the national landscape, it’s now gone beyond players opting out. We saw whole teams opting out of bowl games on Sunday. Due to coaching changes, both Kansas State and Iowa State elected to decline bowl invites, with the Big 12 fining each institution $500K for doing so.

After being snubbed by the CFP Committee, Notre Dame also announced it was declining any bowl invitation. With the Fighting Irish beholden to NBC, why allow ESPN to profit off any Notre Dame matchup in the postseason, right?

Due to whole teams opting out, the Birmingham Bowl had tons of trouble finding a team to fill its second slot. Even 5-7 teams were turning it down. Florida State, Auburn, UCF, Baylor, Rutgers, Temple and Kansas all said no. Finally, App State accepted the invite and will face Georgia Southern in a rematch of a game played just last month.

With the playoff expected to expand again, possibly to as many as 24 teams, this is a trend that will likely continue into the future. Add in that future expansion likely means more playoff games being played on campus, and the need for bowl games shrinks even more.

Make no mistake, there are probably a few too many bowl games, but like the concept or not, those games have always been viewed as a way to reward players for a hard-fought season. It also gives those teams extra practices, which in turn leads to more reps for younger players who might not have been getting those practice reps during the season.

However, extra practices are probably one of the last things on many coaches’ minds this time of the year. December and January are the times to put your roster together for the next year. Coaches are also scrambling to finalize any changes to the coaching staff ahead of the portal window opening on January 2. Not to mention the current ongoing negotiations with players you are trying to retain.

All that to say, a lot of these bowl games could be in trouble when looking towards the future of the sport, particularly the secondary bowls, like the Pinstripe Bowl Clemson is about to play in later this month. While they won’t be disappearing next year or the year after, for those of you who enjoy them, you might better do so while you can.

Photo by Bart Boatwright