The expanded college football playoff format has made bowl games feel meaningless, and the LA Bowl felt those affects in a brief five-year span.
Between player opt-outs and the transfer portal, bowl games have become all but ruined in college football. When you add on the College Football Playoff expansion to a 12-team format, it makes bowls feel essentially meaningless in comparison, and with the rise of NIL and major paydays, it’s not worth the risk to many players. The latest news shows that those postseason opportunities are being threatened. The LA Bowl announced that it is shutting down after five seasons of operation. The event was established in 2020 and became a national showcase in the multi-billion-dollar SoFi Stadium that houses the Los Angeles Rams. The bowl was delayed due to the Covid pandemic and began formally in 2021 with Jimmy Kimmel as the title sponsor.
The last three editions have been hosted by Rob Gronkowski, and featured tie-ins with the Mountain West and Pac-12 conferences, taking an opportunity from those two Group of Five conferences. The Mountain West champion was featured in four of the five bowls against West Coast Pac-12 schools. Despite boasting considerable star power and a favorable location, the event just never found its footing as well-established bowls are struggling to feel the same as they did in years’ past.
It’s just not a game many are going to turn on when the teams struggle to field competitive rosters, and it should have been a bit of a sign that the event continued to cycle to naming-rights sponsors. Without a Power Four tie-in, new bowl events just seem like a lost cause to begin with. The sport has simply leaned into revolving around the expanded CFP, lengthening that format to an alarming degree in the next two years with the national title game held in late January.
Outside of those 12 playoff teams, the remaining programs who win six games or more now will have one less bowl to be selected for, as the total number of expected bowl games for the 2026 season is now down to 40 without the LA Bowl. It’ll be interesting to see if this starts a trend, or if it just shows that the opportunity to create new events is a fruitless endeavor. It’s certainly something that’s been well-warned as bowls continue to lose their shine, and it’s just oversaturated. The LA Bowl attempted to differentiate themselves by leaning into star personalities, but that didn’t seem to land without the shine of more prominent conferences in a bowl system that feels, at this point, designed to fail.