Bowls Used in the EBS

Overview

The Enhanced Bowl Season (EBS) tournament utilizes existing bowls to host games in the tournament. First-round games are held at four geographically-diverse bowls taken from a slate of 12 pre-selected host bowls. Each of these 12 bowls hosts an EBS tournament game every three years. Quarterfinal games are hosted annually by the Capital One and Cotton Bowls, as well as either the Rose and Sugar Bowls or the Fiesta and Orange Bowls. Semifinal matchups are held at whichever pair of bowls was not used for quarterfinal sites (either Rose/Sugar or Fiesta/Orange). Finally, the National Title Game is held at a rotating site that may or may not be the site of a previous bowl used for the previous EBS games that year.

Methods

The selection of EBS host sites considered several factors:

Utilize traditional bowls to help maintain bowl experience and enable conference champions earning byes to be placed in their traditional host bowl.
Select geographically diverse bowls to allow fans from all over the country to experience the bowl season.
Select bowls that will provide the best experiences to the student-athletes and fans while serving to enhance local bowl communities.
Minimize the number of contractual bowls needed to be vacated by a conference in a given year.

Details

First Round Bowl Site Selection

Determining the twelve bowls that will serve as first-round host sites will have to be determined by negotiations with any individual bowl seeking access to the system. While bowls will need to cede the television rights for the year in which they are hosting an EBS tournament game, they stand to benefit from the exposure the EBS will bring to the bowl. Title sponsorship, in-stadium signage, and annual ticket renewals can all be negotiated on a three-year basis, covering both tournament and non-tournament years. Further, since the EBS tournament will be responsible for distributing funds to the qualifying teams, these bowls will not be responsible for compensating teams during their hosting year.

Selecting sites should be conducted as part of a bid process. Factors to be considered are: geographical location and proximity to universities, stadium capacity and facilities, unique experiences that can be provided to student-athletes and fans, impact an EBS tournament game would have on the local economy, and willingness of the affected conferences to sacrifice the bowl game tie-in for hosting years (click here to see the affected conference bowls alignments).

As an example, twelve bowls have been selected that are both geographically diverse (divided in the East, Central, South, and West locations) and located in interesting cities for fans to visit, while at the same time scheduled so as to minimize the impact on each of the conferences for any given year. The Sample First Round Bowl Sites document details these selections.

Quarterfinal Bowl Site Selection

Quarterfinal games are hosted at two of the existing BCS bowls as well as the Capital One and Cotton Bowls. The Capital One and Cotton bowls were promoted to permanent quarterfinal hosts because of their rich tradition, high profile, and geographic location.

The current BCS bowls alternate between hosting a quarterfinal and a semifinal game every other year. One year the Fiesta and Orange Bowls serve as quarterfinal hosts while the next year the Rose and Sugar Bowls host quarterfinal games.

Note: if the Rose bowl would prefer to remain as a January 1 game, it would always serve as a quarterfinal game, and the Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta will rotate hosting semifinals and finals. An additional game (e.g., Gator or Chick-fil-A) would also be promoted to permanent hosting status.

Semifinal and National Title Game Site Selection

The remaining BCS bowls not serving as quarterfinal sites are used to host the semifinal games. That is, if Fiesta/Orange serve as quarterfinal hosts, the Rose/Sugar will be semifinal hosts.

The National Title Game is hosted at a site to be determined on a yearly basis. The site selected should still provide the unique experiences traveling college football fans have come to expect through the bowl tradition.