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Several college football teams thought about playing multiple bowl games this season
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Strange reports, signs and wonders, began floating out of certain college-football quarters over the last several days, and now they’ve been apparently confirmed.
According to Stadium’s Brett McMurphy, both BYU and Liberty, along with several Sun Belt schools, had entered into discussions about potentially playing multiple bowl games this holiday season.
With at least 15 major programs preemptively declining bowl invitations as a consequence of the oppressive conditions created by the Covid-19 pandemic, it was clear the bowls were going to come up short on football teams to play in them, causing a handful of the competitions to be canceled.
The always-eager Cougars of BYU, and several others, stood up and offered to save the day for the money-men organizing the games, but in the end those discussions fell apart, according to McMurphy.
Peak 2020 news: Because several teams opted out of playing in a bowl, BYU & Liberty along with the Sun Belt had discussions about playing in 2 bowls this season to help fill the bowls, but ultimately the schools didn’t for various reasons, sources told @Stadium
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) December 20, 2020
If ever the bizarre circumstance was going to come to fruition that had one football program preparing for and playing in multiple bowl games, then 2020 was the year to see it through. Teams have been desperate for games, and now the bowls are desperate for teams. It appears the novelty and logistical difficulty of this particular gambit was a bridge too far, even for 2020.
Mark Schipper is a reporter, sportswriter, and aspiring novelist living in Chicago, Illinois.