Though much of the moves have trickled out over these past few months, on Tuesday many major players in College Football, Inc., announced they have set their bowl rotations for the 2020-25 seasons. Why through only 2025? That’s when the College Football Playoff’s original 12-year contract expires, after which all bets are off for the future of the sport’s postseason.
In the here and now, the hinge game, of sorts, is the Las Vegas Bowl. Beginning in 2020, the game will take a major step up on the pecking order, first by moving from UNLV’s Sam Boyd Stadium to the Raiders’ new stadium, and then by booting the Mountain West for a rotation of SEC and Big Ten teams to play a Pac-12 opponent. The Pac-12 and Mountain West will still play, however, in a newly-created bowl at the Rams’ and Chargers’ new Los Angeles stadium.
A similar change is occurring in the Midwest, where the MAC is kicking the ACC out of the Quick Lane Bowl, as the ACC will now square off against the AAC in a newly-created bowl game at Fenway Park.
Other major changes, some of which were announced by the players involved and all of which have been broken by Stadium’s Brett McMurphy, include:
- The Holiday Bowl, which was a Pac-10 vs. Big 12 game when I came of age and recently became a Pac-12 vs. Big Ten game, will now be a Pac-12 vs. ACC game.
- The Big Ten will still play the Pac-12 in games below the Rose Bowl on the pecking order, every other year in Las Vegas and in the Redbox Bowl.
- The Cheez-It Bowl will now be Big 12 vs. Big Ten, not Big 12 vs. Pac-12.
- The Independence Bowl will become an ACC vs. Pac-12 game starting in 2020.
- The Las Vegas and Belk bowls will operate on a rotation among the Big Ten and SEC. In 2020, ’22 and ’24, the SEC will be in Las Vegas and the Big Ten in Charlotte. In odd-numbered years, the arrangement will flip.
Here are the lineups that have either been announced or are close enough to official that we can now bank on them... until everything changes again after 2025.
Big Ten
Rose
Orange
Citrus
Outback
Las Vegas
Music City
Belk
Pinstripe
Cheez-It
Redbox
Quick Lane
Big 12
Sugar
Alamo
Camping World
Texas
Liberty
Cheez-It
Armed Forces
First Responder
Pac-12 (not officially announced)
Rose
Alamo
Las Vegas
Holiday
Redbox
Sun
Los Angeles
Independence
SEC
Sugar
Citrus
Texas
Liberty
Belk
Music City
Las Vegas
Gator
Outback
Birmingham
Gasparilla