No bowls for you! ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit, as big of a junkie of the sport as they come, doesn’t want bowl games anymore. The former Ohio State quarterback, now one of the most prominent faces on ESPN, says that the College Football Playoff is enough.
Most bowl games should go into the history books, Herbstreit said.
Convenient, of course, because Ohio State projects to be in the newly expanded College FootballPlayoff format on an annual basis.
But for fans of programs like Rutgers, who beat Miami in the Pinstripe Bowl last week, these postseason games mean something and build momentum for next year. Rutgers 31-24 win in the Pinstripe Bowl saw them capture the program’s first winning season as well as their first bowl win since 2014.
The win saw Rutgers finish the season 7-6 (3-5 Big Ten).
Herbstreit thinks there is bowl overkill right now and that the product, given all the top-outs, is diluted. The College Football Playoff should be enough to satisfy the sport’s massive fanbase.
“I think the 12-team playoff is going to create a lot of buzz. How many games will that be, seven total? You have the quarterfinals,the semis and the national championship,” Herbstreit said on ESPN this week.
“I think we’re headed to – I’m a college basketball fan, we all get our brackets out, March Madness…Tell me about the NIT, how’s that going for you? You know who is even in the NIT? That’s where the bowls are going next year. I think you eliminate the bowls. Nobody wants to play in them, don’t play bowls
“Don’t play bowls. We’ll have the 12 teams, we’ll get excited about those and if you want to add maybe five or six more bowls outside of that, then do five six. We’re getting to a point that is ridiculous. We’re putting 6-6 teams in bowl games nobody cares about.”
There are currently 41 bowl games.
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Herbstreit was the starting quarterback for Ohio State in the 1992 Citrus Bowl in a loss to Georgia.
Future Big Ten member Washington (set to join the conference in 2024) will play current Big Ten member Michigan in the College Football Playoff National Championship next week.