College Football’s 2019 Bowl Schedule Is Horrific

For all the talk about protecting the bowl season, those running college football seem hell-bent on ruining it.

There have been rumors that the college football playoff is looking to expand and, despite my lifelong love of bowl games, it’s time. Though I favor a utopian 16-team playoff over a minor expansion to six or eight, the bowl season is becoming less and less in need of protecting. In fact, this year may end it.

The schedule for the 2019–20 bowl schedule is ridiculously long, with the first game coming on Friday, December 20, and the last non-title game coming on Monday, January 6. Incredibly, the title game is another week later on Monday, January 13, and ratings could be ugly all around.

When the college football playoff debuted, we were promised a return to glory on New Year’s Day and a condensed bowl season. For the past four years, no bowl games were played after January 2. It felt like we had finally revisited the “bowl week” concept that ESPN pioneered in the early 1990’s as the “Most Wonderful Week of the Year.” Instead, this year harkens back to the ugly early 2010s, when a spread-out schedule essentially killed off the bowl system.

Let’s go through the high-, err lowlights of this year’s schedule.