College football games are still a couple of months away, but the 2024 season promises to be unlike any other before it. 

The NCAA and power conferences are close to a historic, $2.7 billion settlement that could see revenue be shared with players. Meanwhile, the College Football Playoff is expanding from four to 12 teams, in a move that is already impacting the sport off the field, and even touching the NFL’s business, too.

With the impending changes creating plenty of uncertainties, Front Office Sports caught up with one of the most plugged-in people when it comes to college football’s postseason: Nick Carparelli, who is the executive director of Bowl Season, the organization that oversees more than 40 bowl games each year.

NIL Bowl Game Contracts for All?

Snoop Dogg, who will sponsor this year’s Arizona Bowl, recently announced the game will become the first to provide name, image, and likeness deals to competing players. Could that model be the new norm for all bowl games? “That’s a decision that’s up to each individual bowl game,” Carparelli explains. “But I think we would all be naive to think that that’s not right around the corner for everybody.”

Last season, bowl games were riddled with players dropping out, either to prepare for the NFL draft or enter the transfer portal to find a new school. NIL contracts could keep more players in those postseason contests, but finding the funding could be complicated. 

“Any payments to student athletes for participation in bowl games would need to be a shared initiative between the bowls, the conferences, and the institutions themselves,” Carparelli says, noting the millions of dollars already being shelled out. “If the conferences and the universities were to tell the bowl games, ‘Hey, we would like these payments to go directly to the student athletes through NIL,’ then that would be very easy for the bowl games to execute.”

Breaking From Tradition

This year’s bowl game schedule was recently released, and it looks different than years past because of the expanded CFP. Three first-round playoff games fall on Dec. 21, which is the third Saturday of the month that would typically kick off the bowl festivities with seven contests. As a result, Carparelli explained why Bowl Season moved some games up a week to Dec. 14, which is the Saturday that Army-Navy usually has to itself.

“[That] was a big decision that we did not take lightly,” Carparelli says. “At the end of the day, our hand was forced, with the new College Football Playoff schedule, to put some games on that day. But we were very, very careful to make sure that we did not infringe upon that exclusive TV window.”

Call for Unification

First-round CFP games will take place on schools’ campuses, but Carparelli said they should ditch that approach and become part of Bowl Season. “We feel that the entire College Football Playoff should be played in the neutral-site environments that bowl games offer,” he says. The CFP quarterfinals and semifinals will be played as New Year’s Six bowl games.

CFP expansion beyond 12 teams has already been considered, but the new format’s debut is still on everyone’s mind—especially bowl game organizers. “We will be curious observers as to how this first year of on-campus CFP games goes,” Carparelli says.

The new pitch for an $800 million renovation to Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte runs along largely familiar grounds, namely updating a 28-year-old facility and bringing it fully into the 21st century for its two primary tenants: the NFL’s Panthers and Charlotte FC of MLS.

But there is an even bigger—and also increasingly common—goal with the proposed work: landing major events such as the Super Bowl, Final Four, and College Football Playoff that typically require a dome, particularly if played in colder-weather climates. As of now, the proposed Charlotte renovation does not include a dome, but that project is still deeply intertwined with going beyond local considerations. 

“I’ll be blunt. I don’t think this city with an outdoor stadium is ever going to be on a Super Bowl rotation,” said Vinay Patel, chair of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, to the city council in advance of a scheduled June 24 vote on the stadium plan. “But we have an opportunity to go get it at least once after this. … We have everything we need that the NFL would look for.”

Growing List of Cities

The Queen City is far from alone in connecting its local stadium deliberations to big-event aspirations. Many of the same considerations are playing out in:

• Chicago, where the Bears have proposed a $4.7 billion downtown, domed stadium capable of bringing the marquee events to the No. 3 U.S. media market 
• Cleveland, where the Browns are considering a similar, domed facility in suburban Brook Park, Ohio, that could host such top-tier competitions—with that option standing against a less expensive, open-air renovation of the lakefront Cleveland Browns Stadium
• Jacksonville, where a proposed $1.4 billion renovation to EverBank Stadium to create what local officials call the “Stadium of the Future” also has designs on remaking the venue into a “Super Bowl–ready facility”
• Kansas City, where a modern, potentially domed facility is central to a growing push to lure the Chiefs across the border from Missouri to Kansas
• Washington, D.C., where a potential deal to remake the site of RFK Stadium for a new Commanders stadium is predicated in part on generating economic impact from events such as the Super Bowl

Dollars Behind the Dreams

The impetus behind the elevated focus around the major events is easily understandable. Sports industry tentpoles such as Super Bowl and Final Four generate an economic impact far beyond any local pro team’s regular-season or playoff games, often extending well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Such fiscal impact studies have long been the subject of scrutiny and excessive civic boosterism, and often need to be greeted with skepticism. But regardless of any specific number or how it’s derived, there is still little debate that events such as the Super Bowl have few rivals in what it can mean to a community.

“That’s the type of development that we would support in the District, one that delivers world-class sports,” Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser said on WTEM-AM regarding the potential RFK Stadium effort. “We’re not just talking about a potential Super Bowl. We haven’t been able to get the World Cup in the region because we don’t have a sufficient stadium. We weren’t able to get Taylor Swift to come to the region.”