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Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl represents stability in college football era of change
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- Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl represents stability in college football era of change
College football has been evolving since its genesis , but the last decade, in particular, has brought a sea change that inundated every aspect of the sport.
The playoffs have gone from two to four to 12 teams. Starting with Stanford's Christian McCaffrey in the 2016 Sun Bowl , players with NFL prospects routinely opt out of bowl games , and others enter the transfer portal created in 2018.
Ashley Rios, the Lady in Waiting for the 2024 Sun Court, dances with Jedd Fisch, Washington's head football coach, as he arrived in El Paso on Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024, for the 2024 Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl.
More: 91st Annual Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl guide: Where to stay, what to do, how to buy tickets
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The Pac-12, at least for the moment, no longer exists in a recognizable form.
Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl stability
Yet here comes the 91st playing of the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl , featuring a 6-6 Washington team that counts as a "Pac-12 Legacy" against 8-4 Louisville from the ACC.
The Cardinals and Huskies arrived from opposite sides of the country on the afternoon of Dec. 26 to be greeted at the El Paso airport (Atlantic Aviation) together by mariachis and folklórico dancers.
They will select swag at the gift suite, tour Fort Bliss, visit hospitals, and, on the Sun Bowl's traditional date of Dec. 31, play each other in a game televised by longtime (since 1968) Sun Bowl partner CBS.
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The nation's second-oldest bowl will largely look the same as it has since the ACC and Pac-12 started playing each other here in 2010, and it will not be much different from when Virginia Tech and Cincinnati played in El Paso in 1947.
In the changing tides of college football, the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, which will turn 91 on New Year's Eve, is a rock of stability.
Raegan Jabor, the Sun Queen for the 2024 Sun Court, dances with Jeff Brohm, head Louisville football coach, as he arrived in El Paso on Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024, for the 2024 Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl.
Bowls 'a vital part of college football'
"Everything is going pretty much the same way it's always been," executive director Bernie Olivas said. "I still think the bowls are a vital part of college football."
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"College football needs the bowls; the bowls need college football. I think there will be a way for the bowl system to continue as it always has," Olivas said.
The math is simple. Twelve teams are headed to a College Football Playoff that will total 11 games, with six of those contests (four quarterfinals and two semifinals) bearing a traditional bowl name. So, the top 12 teams will, in some combination, fill six bowl spots, as they have for more than half a century.
There are 36 bowls not in that playoff, so the best 72 that don't make the CFP have somewhere else to go. One of the better landing spots is the Sun Bowl. With a reported payout of $3,447,568, it ranks No. 11 among those 36.
Sun Bowl mostly untouched by changes
The impact of the expanding playoffs has not yet rippled down to the Sun Bowl and won't as long as it stays at 12 schools. For example, this year two ACC teams (SMU and Clemson) made the playoffs instead of zero last year.
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The ACC also has 17 teams now, up from 14 last year, so even with two teams unable to be picked by non-playoff bowls with an ACC affiliation, there is one more team on the table.
And those bowl-eligible teams still look forward to a December trip.
A U.S. flag is displayed on the field as military aircraft fly overhead at the 90th Sun Bowl game between Notre Dame and Oregon Sate on Dec. 29, 2023.
"It's a celebration for the schools who have gone through six months of hard work," Olivas said. "Bowls reward the players and the universities with an opportunity to visit a different place in the country and get different experiences."
"That's what bowls are about: A celebration of college football," Olivas said.
Nick Carparelli is the director of Bowl Season, the umbrella organization of which all the bowls are members. Bowl Season held its annual meeting in El Paso this spring .
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"The (College Football Playoff) is great for college football, but there are only 12 spots in the playoffs, and there are 135 FBS institutions, many of which are deserving of a meaningful experience at the end of the regular season," Carparelli said. "The bowl system is going to continue to provide that."
Louisville football players dance with the Folklorico dancers when they arrive in El Paso on Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024, for the 2024 Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl.
Challenges in the opt-out era
There is no getting around the impact of the opt-outs, the transfer portal and the NIL ("name, image and likeness," which means paying college players) that heats up the transfer portal.
Louisville and Washington so far have a combined 36 players on the roster they started the year with who won't be available for this game, including Louisville's two best offensive players, their quarterback and top receiver.
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This is normal for every bowl. Shortly after selection-day pairings were announced, Marshall withdrew from the Independence Bowl because so many players transferred that it didn't feel it could be competitive. It was replaced by 5-7 Louisiana Tech.
"The problems facing the bowl system are not unique to us," Carparelli said. "They are problems facing all of college athletics right now and they will be solved. This opt-out era will become a thing of the past very soon."
"Something is broken in college football and it's not the bowl system," Carparelli said.
Tony the Tiger takes selfies with Louisville football players after they arrive in El Paso on Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024, for the 2024 Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl.
Olivas doesn't like the opt-out era, no one does, but he's philosophical about it.
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"We're picking the schools with the name on the front (of the jersey), not on the back," Olivas said. "There are a lot of football players out there who want to experience a bowl game. For a lot of these players, this is the last football game they'll get to play."
"Bowls are necessary for that."
The easy fix for the transfer portal is to wait to open it until the national championship game has been played, but pressure from every direction is becoming overwhelming.
The opt-outs seem like a harder issue to fix, but every bowl-eligible team and every bowl deals with them in December.
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Sun Bowl future: Big 10 or Big 12 vs. ACC?
Another area where the Sun Bowl will evolve is its conference tie-ins.
When the Pac-12 collapsed last year in the latest realignment, its contracts with all its bowl partners still had two years left. The NCAA solution was to keep the 12 teams that played in the Pac-12 in 2023 together in a bowl pool for this season and the next.
That creates oddities like Pac-12 teams BYU and Colorado (representing "Pac-12 Legacy") playing each other in the Alamo Bowl but not in the regular season.
Beyond next year, the Sun Bowl will begin negotiations for new conference affiliations for 2026 and beyond in the next month and renewing with the ACC is at the top of the wish list. Olivas seemed confident that could happen.
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The other big want is to continue to pit two power conferences against each other. The NCAA will need to clarify whether a retooled Pac-12 counts. The Sun Bowl has been formally tied with the Pac-12 since 1995.
If the Pac-12 is no longer a power conference, and that seems likely at the moment, the Sun Bowl will negotiate with the Big 12, the Big 10 and the SEC, with the Big 12 or Big 10 being the more likely options.
What is certain is that in 2026, perhaps on Thursday, Dec. 31, at noon, two teams will kick off in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl. The nation's second-oldest bowl isn't going anywhere.
"I feel at ease; even with the playoffs, bowls are still important," Olivas said. "Only 12 teams go to the playoffs; there are 135 schools out there. The bowl system will remain healthy."
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The Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl is proof.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Amidst changing tides, Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl is about stability
