The Pop-Tarts Bowl and the future of college football’s postseason
- David Hale, ESPN Personnel WriterAug 6, 2024, 07:00 AM ET Close College football reporter.Joined ESPN in 2012.
- Graduate of the University of Delaware.For Michigan fans, the minute when the
Wolverines clinched a championship game in January will echo through generations.For everybody else, the most indelible picture of the 2023-24 bowl season involves a 6-foot anthropomorphic pastry being reduced into a toaster, baked and devoured by ravenous Kansas State football players to the tune of Donna Summer’s”Hot Stuff.”This seems fair. Michigan, after all, has 12 nationwide titles. Frosted Strawberry is, to the very best of anybody’s understanding, the only mascot ever prepared and taken in by the winning team.The trick, thought up by the folks at Florida Citrus Sports as a method of promoting the 2023 Pop-Tarts
Bowl in Orlando, Florida, was an enormous coup for the title sponsor. Pop-Tarts earned a reported$ 12.1 million in media direct exposure from the game and sold 22 million more Pop-Tarts (or 11 million cellophane packs of two, to utilize appropriate breakfast pastry exchange rates)than it had the week prior to kickoff.But in selling the brand, it’s likewise entirely possible that, in the middle of a turbulent college sports landscape, the Pop-Tarts Bowl showed everybody a way forward.( Well, everybody other than Frosted Strawberry. His journey ended in that toaster.) “Nobody’s going to forget the Frosted Strawberry coming down into the toaster,”Matt Repchak, primary marketing officer for Florida Citrus Sports,
the host of the Pop-Tarts Bowl, stated.”That might be all of our legacies. However at the end of it, there’s individuals who made memories while they were here, and we want to simply be a fun part of the college football calendar. ” Pop-Tarts earned a reported$12.1 million in media direct exposure from its bowl game. Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire The top-line numbers around bowl games are a point of pride, as Bowl Season executive director Nick Carparelli stated. In 2015’s bowls were enjoyed by approximately 4.4 million people, according to Carparelli, including 15 games that balanced more than 3 million audiences, not counting the College Football Playoff. More than 190 million people watched during bowl season in total. Bowl games outside the College Football Playoff distributed in excess of$100 million to conferences.”Bowl games are really popular, “Carparelli said.”Sure, they do not all aspect into the national championship equation but they do not need to in order to be meaningful to everyone involved.”That’s the hard information. The vibes, nevertheless, are a bit off.The list of complaints and concerns over bowl season is extensive. Star players opt out of games to prepare for the NFL draft or safeguard their draft stock, and the transfer portal incentivizes numerous players to
avoid bowl season in favor of free company. The pattern hit its nadir in
last year’s Capital One Orange Bowl when nearly 2 dozen Florida State players sat out– mostly as a demonstration over being overlooked of the playoff, according to head coach Mike Norvell. The outcome was an unsightly 63-3 Georgia win followed by complaints from Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart that the sport ran the risk of destroying championship game if it didn’t attend to player attrition.Editor’s Picks Florida State’s frustrations over the playoff snub might have been a special case, however the narrative highlighted a bigger problem: The playoff has drawn most of the oxygen out of the space when it comes to college football’s postseason. Bowls outside the four-team playoff quickly become an afterthought, and with this year’s growth from 4 to 12 playoff teams, the effect could be
even bigger.Add in conference adjustment, which has already efficiently killed the Pac-12, and forecasts of an eventual super league (or 2 ), and the future of the bowl system appears on shaky ground.But talk with the folks charged with coming up with methods to conserve the system, and they’re oozing with optimism– and maybe some strawberry filling.”The world is altering. That’s the consistent state of the sport,”Repchak said. “Things remain in flux, and it will continue to be. But as constantly, the bowls will adjust and discover some brand-new ways to engage. “A few of the methods they’re currently doing it, in no particular order: Dumping a giant tub of mayonnaise on a coach’s head.Dumping a giant barrel of eggnog on a coach’s head.Dumping a huge container of Cheez-Its on a coach’s head.Dumping a giant bowl of cereal on a coach’s head.MAYO DUMP. pic.twitter.com/pEqLT19Zc5!.?.!— Duke’s Mayo Classic (@DukesMayoBowl )December 28, 2023 Hey, it’s a copycat league.”I don’t like to call it stealing concepts. I call it market research,”
Mark Neville, CEO of the DirecTV Holiday Bowl, the game accountable for the eggnog bath, stated.”You need to do things to stand apart, and I believe championship game are the very best at thinking outside the box.
“Neville echoed the creativity-at-all-costs approach on a Tuesday in late July, simply a few hours removed from his most current personnel conference to pitch ideas for producing engagement and interest through silliness in December’s game.That engagement is finest if it at least has the appearance of developing naturally. As such, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl commemorates the shirtless guys caught on electronic camera eating straight from the container with a spoon during the game or establishing the broadcasters with a nice jar of mayo to enjoy between calls. The Cheez-It Citrus Bowl( likewise operated by Florida Citrus Sports )managed to take a little buzz from its cousin
by marketing that its mascot was not edible. The Pop-Tarts Bowl folks dropped off countless boxes of Pop-Tarts to taking part teams, media members and broadcasters and, throughout this summer’s media blitz, even hosted a Pop-Tarts and beer pairing during the
ACC’s yearly kickoff event.It works. The Pop-Tarts Bowl got 15 times more media discusses than any other bowl and eight times the social media traffic of any other December championship game, according to Florida Citrus Sports’ information analysis.All of the silliness is possible for 2 reasons. The first is that those bowls have a title sponsor eager to lean into the fun. The second is the something most fans appear to see as an issue: The stakes are low.”Our young personnel is not scared to attempt some things, “Danny Morrison, executive director of the Charlotte Sports Structure, which hosts the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, stated.”Some work and some don’t. We wish to magnify the game and not remove from it. The game is the No. 1 concern. However if we can do other things to make it enjoyable and
pertinent, that is very important, too.”Still, the enjoyable is a suggestion that, outside the playoff, these games don’t have to be taken rather so seriously by fans.When bowls initially entered the college football lexicon, there was no expectation they ‘d
be a metric in the bigger evaluation of a team’s season. Heck, national titles were distributed before bowl games were played, and till 2000, statistics from bowl games didn’t count towards a player’s season tally.
Even now, the game’s greatest specific honor, the Heisman Prize, is distributed weeks before any of its finalists play in the postseason.What’s so bad, then, about playing bowl games even when the stakes are low? Possibly it’s just an understanding issue.”These are exhibit games,” Repchak stated. “They’re indicated to be enjoyable, a good watch on tv and an excellent vacation for individuals who come and the teams who are participating, where we can lean into the fun and carve out their own little specific niche in the hearts and minds of college
football fans.”Projectile foods items and edible mascots are not the only state of play, nevertheless. After all, not every bowl has a title sponsor eager to embrace silliness. The MVP of the Surefire Rate Bowl doesn’t get to refinance your home loan, and even the most daring coaches most likely do not want a gasoline bath after the Valero Alamo Bowl.Neville said the staff at the Vacation Bowl had something of” an aha moment “when it hosted a regular-season game between Navy and Notre Dame in 2018. The energy and interest surrounding the event made it clear the group had been believing far
too narrowly defining its place in the sports landscape.”That completely changed our scope of work from just being a championship game to owning and running three events and [serving] as the sports commission for San Diego, “Neville said.Now, the rebranded Sports San Diego hosts an in-season college basketball competition, the California State Games (a statewide Olympics-style occasion that includes upward of 10,000 professional athletes)and works to bring other signature events, consisting of a recent rugby match in between Fiji and New Zealand’s All Blacks.Before 2018, the Vacation Bowl might dependably count on adding 15,000 or two hotel nights to the city’s tourist coffers. Now, amongst all occasions hosted or organized by Sports San Diego, that number is better to 150,000 every year with a goal to include 100,000 more in the near future. This hints at another element often lost in the examination of bowl season: Not all bowls are alike. Lots of bowl games are successfully made-for-TV events. Individuals in seats are not a priority. Rather, these games typically host smaller Group of 5 matches and routinely draw more than a million viewers.
They have actually done their job.But others, such as the Valero Alamo Bowl, have loftier objectives.”We’ve produced a vacation custom,”Derrick Fox, CEO of the Alamo Bowl, said.”It’s locally based, and independent of the teams playing, it does a great deal of good for the regional economy and lets individuals experience all San Antonio has to offer.”Bowls serve lots of masters: the groups playing, the host cities, the title sponsors, the fans, the TV networks. There is no one metric for success, which often makes it simpler to inform the story of their demise.” The college athletics landscape is altering right before our eyes, and no one can tell you what this is going to appear like after these next 2 years,”Neville stated,”and we’re going to need to adapt.”What changes may be in store?For one, the playoff model and conference tie-ins might all be reorganized starting in 2026– for now, the two remaining Pac-12 schools and 10 outbound ones will continue to receive quotes from the Pac-12’s affiliations. Numerous commissioners have actually currently hinted at expanding the playoff even more, which could open the door to more bowl games making entry into the exclusive club of playoff hosts– something Fox said the Alamo Bowl is currently preparing to push for.The present 12-team playoff hasn’t yet played out, but Morrison wonders if the plan to play opening-round games on campus might be reevaluated, too. It’s something for bowls that are used to hosting an annual game each December to host a significant occasion. The pressure for on-campus facilities– often in smaller towns with less facilities– to do it with simply a few weeks ‘notice is a much bigger task. Allowing bowls to host opening-round games, too, could be a boon for the whole system.Additionally, when the current contracts end, a number of bowl directors said they ‘d be open to nixing conference tie-ins in favor of allowing bowls to select the best overall matches after the playoff field is set– preferably allowing bowls to protect games in between groups with the least opt-outs and the most interest about the game and the venue.The continued advancement of name, image and likeness and income sharing with athletes when (or if)your house vs. NCAA case is settled likewise unlocks to attend to some of the problems with opt-outs. Carparelli stated he’s hopeful that profits sharing strategies would include requirements that players play in every game in order to receive their full allocation, and several bowl directors showed a willingness to partner with prominent players in the NIL space to help guarantee their involvement. Interestingly, professional athletes are currently forbidden from doing paid recommendations for particular games or to help offer tickets, and lots of bowl administrators said the more likely long-term circumstance would be for bowls to donate to a school’s collective instead of to pay athletes directly.But for all the concerns and issues about the future, there’s little hand-wringing about existential
threats.Yes, there are obstacles. However championship game love a challenge.These are, after all, individuals who found a method to toast a sentient Pop-Tart.