With the future of College Football’s bowl season due to the expansion and increasing importance of the College Football Playoff, here’s a look at three destinations that could help reignite interest.
Even with the relatively recent advent of the College Football Playoff and a season that stretches on into late January now, it’s still harder to find a bigger day for the sport than New Year’s Day.
While today’s Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl are all tied to the College Football Playoff bracket, they remain true hallmarks of the sport’s history, serving as some of the longest-standing and most recognizable events across all of North American sports.
Yet with the recent expansion to a 12-team College Football Playoff that began in the 2024 season, the previously highly anticipated bowl season that served as a grand celebration and culmination of the sport’s successful programs has now inarguably lost some of its shine and importance.
For generations, a bowl game of any kind served as an immense source of pride for college football programs, with a six-win season being enough to give a team an opportunity to close out a season on a winning note and play a game against a unique opponent in a unique setting.
Furthermore, the bowl season has long been of incredibly high importance to senior college football players, the vast majority of whom play in their final football game at the collegiate level before moving on to pursue a career in another field.
The expansion of the College Football Playoff and expected further expansion has had an undeniable impact on bowl games that are not connected to the playoff. This has further been exacerbated by the transfer portal and NIL deals that have created a college football landscape that represents professional sports in many aspects.
These factors have led to what was previously an unthinkable outcome in 2025 – numerous schools declining bowl game invitations due to player opt-outs, coaching changes, or in Notre Dame’s infamous case, deciding it just wasn’t worth it.
With the playoff only set to expand further in the coming years, an entire section of the calendar circled by sports fans every year could be in jeopardy as the NCAA and member universities grapple with a vastly changed landscape.
Yet at a time of year when there aren’t a ton of sports on and when most people are home from work and school, the bowl season remains both a highlight for sports fans each year as well as a necessary financial boon for ESPN, who broadcasts the vast majority of bowl games each year.
With the future of bowl season approaching a crossroads, here’s a look at three stadiums the NCAA could look at as host locations to try and spice up the games in the near future.
1. Wrigley Field – Wrigley Bowl
With bowl games having been played in the cold-weather environments at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park in recent years, the absence of a bowl game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field feels especially conspicuous.
Affectionately known as “The Friendly Confines,” Wrigley Field has a rich football history, primarily centering around the park serving as the home of the Chicago Bears from 1921 to 1970.
In recent years, Big Ten organizers have brought Wrigley back into the fold, with the Northwestern Wildcats having hosted multiple home games at the stadium in the 2020’s.
Already with an established format and precedent for operating football games at the modern Wrigley Field, adding a bowl game to the stadium feels like a no-brainer in many ways. From adding another cold-weather game to a mostly southern-centric bowl season while introducing one of the most historic North American stadiums to the college football postseason, not having a bowl game at Wrigley Field thus far has been a massive missed opportunity.
2. Lambeau Field – Green Bay Bowl
While the logic here is pretty similar to that with Wrigley Field, this also feels like a bit of a missed opportunity for the NCAA.
Although the incredibly harsh winters of Green Bay certainly haven’t helped this idea gain any prominence, there’s no denying that Lambeau Field is universally regarded as a crown jewel of the sport by football players and fans alike – which would create an incredibly intimate and unique setting at The Frozen Tundra.
In addition to giving collegiate athletes an opportunity to experience a frigid Lambeau Field in all of its glory, it also adds a flare of college football to a place that revolves around a pro sports franchise more than any other American city.
In an era where bowl games consistently struggle to sell out, it’s quite easy to imagine the football-addicted population of northern Wisconsin make their way out to Lambeau to take in the kind of football they haven’t gotten to before.
For the fans, players and city of Green Bay, a bowl game at Lambeau Field would be a fitting celebration of football in the place where it means more to the local population than it does just about anywhere else in an already football-centric country.
3. Lumen Field – Seattle Bowl
As you can probably tell, I think there’s more than enough bowls in warm-weather climates as it is – and what better way to make things interesting than to host a bowl at one of the loudest stadiums in all of professional sports.
While one couldn’t reasonably expect a Seahawks playoff game-like atmosphere at a bowl game, pitting two programs based in the American West could make for an incredibly unique and raucous atmosphere at a prized NFL stadium.
Additionally, the game would add a second bowl to the northwestern U.S. and the first in the Pacific Northwest, with the Idaho Potato Bowl currently being played each year in Boise. For a region of the country often overlooked when it comes to big-ticket national events, having a distinct bowl game on the calendar each year could quickly become a prized tradition among northwestern football fans.
For the players themselves, the game would open up yet another opportunity to play in an NFL stadium, one already packed with plenty of history and tradition as the “home of the 12th man” since its opening for the 2002 season.
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