The Real Madness With The College Football Postseason Is Not The Playoffs

Commentary By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Sports Editor

There’s more whining than celebrating and the media – especially the commentators and “analysts” on ESPN which fans the flames of the latter – when it comes to the College Football Playoffs. That’s the case with 12 teams and it will be the same with 16. Heck it would be the same with 32 or more. Just look at March Madness.

But the real madness with the college football postseason is not the playoffs but the bowl games and in particular teams “opting out” of those games. Four teams – Notre Dame, Baylor, Iowa State and Kansas State – have turned down bowl invitations.

“We have declined the opportunity to play in a Bowl, as we’ve already progressed deeply into the offseason timeline of preparation for the 2026 season,” Baylor put out in a statement. Not that anyone outside of Waco really cares about Baylor but still, it’s a sign of where things are now.

Here’s the statement Notre Dame put out about it: “As a team, we’ve decided to withdraw our name for consideration for a bowl game following the 2025 season. We appreciate all the support from our families and fans, and we’re hoping to bring the 12th national title to South Bend in 2026.”

Are the Irish going back to their previous tradition of not playing in a bowl game period? Nope. It’s copping out because it did not make the playoffs (and deservedly so, for it lost to the only two good teams on its schedule). Notre Dame – Notre Dame! – just threw in the towel on the season. Chickened out, which is another Irish tradition. It’s the modern-day equivalent of Ara Parseghian running up the middle to tie Michigan State. Heck, Notre Dame won’t even fully commit to joining a conference; it wants it’s own cake and to eat it, too.

Kansas State and Iowa State were each fined $500,000 from their own conference for skipping the bowl game. Notre Dame? It’s crying that the playoff system is unfair. Heck, based on strength of schedule, Texas deserves to be in more than Notre Dame.  College football needs to be more like college basketball when it comes to scheduling in which “quality wins” are measured into which teams make it into the NCAA Tournament.

What teams backing out of bowl games shows is how weak the bowls are in this playoff era. While creating excitement in one area, it’s destroyed another. Okay, granted, there are way too many bowls. There are 36 bowl games this year that are not the playoffs. Sure, that was fun when if first started because you could enter office or bar bowl pools but after time even the most die-hard college football fans could not watch more than a quarter of bad teams they never heard of playing in the likes of the Bahamas Bowl.

The past few years the bowls have been further diluted by players opting out but who would have figured that now entire teams would turn down invitations?

What’s the solution? Put more value in the non-playoff bowl games. Make the fun again; make them a destination that players want to play in, that teams want to go to and fans would like to attend. Get the local tourism boards involved in the process. If any bowl or destination would like to bring me on as a consultant to brainstorm some ideas, I would be open to that opportunity.

This story was written by a human with no assistance from AI or ChatGTP.