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Posted on 12/13/2025 5:46:05 PM PST by BradyLS
I’ve learned that Notre Dame has decided to opt out of any post-season bowl games this year. They finished the season with a 10-2 record, losing to Miami and Texas A&M. I know they are an independent program/not a part of any conference.
Is this a reasonable decision? Unreasonable? If they played a strong schedule or have a record of beating teams that made it to the 12-team cut-off, I can see understand their POV. (Not saying it’s right. Just that I understand it.)
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Yep. Notre Dame feels so entitled that University of Texas fans notice…
Quite a number of teams have opted out of playing in any bowl games not just Notre Dame. In fact, some of the really minor bowls, we’re having problems getting anybody to play and they decided to drop the standards to let 5-6 teams in to play that’s how bad it is.
Under certain circumstances, they probably would’ve taken Arkansas at their lousy record. You got something like 45 bowl games that are played. Most of them are just ridiculous.
I am 70 and I looked it up and back in the hay day. Say about 1970 there were only 11 bowls and out of that only six of them were major bowls that determined who the number one team might be at the end of the year, of course absent the playoff system we have now. But people look forward to those games because they had the best of the best.
Junk the playoffs and go back to the bowls. The Rose Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl, etc. should be meaningful championship games between rival conferences, not mere playoffs. And while we’re at it, let’s also junk the transfer portal, late-night kickoffs, weekday games, transcontinental conferences and the two-minute warning.
ND is consistently in the top 4 money makers in college football, people like to watch ND play ball and buy there merch so it was stupid not to put them in the playoffs.
“The players get the bowl game experience. “
People don’t realize how important the extra month on the field is- not so much the bowl game experience- but its an extra month of practice which can be critical for redshirt freshman that aren’t playing. Coaches get to install a lot of schemes they will be using the following year...remember- colleges are restricted to the number of organized team practices they are allowed to have...
Conference titles matter. When you play an independent schedule for the TV dollars…you might just lose out.
Was that fair? I don't think so. Is there an ND sense of entitlement? Absolutely. But I don't think they're the only ones.
I kind of wish they would drop the college part and just call it athletics. IMO college has always been about primadonnas and entitlements. Who can blame one school over the other.
The bowl game practices have become meaningless in the era of NIL and the grantee portal.
Sorry — TRANSFER portal.
Agree on the extra practices as i posted but other than Jeremiyah Love, no other ND player would’ve opted out of a CFP bowl game unless they were injured....
Little known fact- the NIL deals these players sign with schools contractually ends between December 31 to January 15 depending on the school and the contracts are structured so the last NIL check the player receives is usually the biggest...if they players opt out of the bowl game they don’t get that last check.
Remember all the BS Sheduer Sanders spouted as to why he played in the bowl game last season? It was for the team, blah-blah-blah??? That was just that- BS...he wanted that last NIL check which was large....
I know of an Oklahoma player from last season who had to play in the bowl game to get his final NIL check of $100,000...if he opted out he would not have received the $$$...he ended up being selected in the 4th round of the draft...
Patently false- coaches want the practices for the freshman & sophomores, redshirts or not...
I.E. Jerimyah Love, their best player, their running back candidate for the Heisman Trophy likely would not play. Their starting QB would not play. With their best players sitting out—sure, they might lose to what they consider a lesser team, so what’s the point?
Agreed!
They don’t need to travel a couple of thousand miles just to hold practices for a meaningless game.
“...what is the up-side in playing a post-season game that won’t matter?”
Money, lots and lots of it. And declining a bowl game invitation can be costly which is why they declared their not wanting to go. The Big 12 fined 6-6 Kansas State and 8-4 Iowa State for declining invitations to a bowl game. That’s because they lost their conference money.
College football bowl payouts vary wildly, with non-playoff bowls paying conferences roughly $2 million to $7 million+ per team, while College Football Playoff (CFP) teams earn significantly more, starting at $4 million for just appearing, plus $3 million for expenses per round, with top teams earning up to $14 million or more, with these funds going to conferences and then distributed to schools, not directly to players.
However, money from bowl game TV contracts, separate from sponsor money, goes first to the college football conferences, not directly to the schools, and the conferences then distribute it to their member universities based on their own bylaws, often with larger shares for the teams in the high-profile games, plus general revenue sharing, while schools also get revenue from sponsorships and tickets. Major networks like ESPN pay billions for rights, which flows down, creating massive revenue streams for leagues like the SEC, Big Ten, and ACC, fueling the entire system.
Bowl game TV contract money varies wildly, from smaller bowls getting a few million, to New Year’s Six/CFP-adjacent games getting tens of millions, with the expanded College Football Playoff (CFP) itself now part of a massive $1.3 billion annual deal with ESPN through 2032. That’s a lot of test tubes and office furniture.
wy69
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