Bring a college football bowl game to your hometown.
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 15 seconds
It’s that time of year, College Football is right in the middle of its bowl season. Most teams that have a record above 6-6(.500) qualify to play in a bowl game.
A bowl game is when two teams that qualify travel to a neutral site to play each other. Usually it’s a warm place with lots of culture and is surrounded by events for players and fans with a big corporate sponsor.
EASYPOST HAWAI'I BOWL
Historically, bowl games have been a fun addition to the end of the football season, but in recent years it seems they have been declining in popularity. Players opt out of playing to avoid injury, and fans aren’t traveling as much to see their teams play.
There are other places to get step by step guides on how to start a bowl game, but you can get those anywhere.
Let’s talk about how we can bring a new bowl game into the modern era of College Football.
Incentivize the players
These days, College Football is all about money. The players can get paid huge sums of NIL(name, image, and likeness) to commit and play at a particular school.
Each player could be incentivized to promote the game on their own personal social media platforms.
Work out a contract to pay players $0.05 per like across all platforms, up to 1,000,000 likes. This would give players a chance to earn $50,000 for just a few weeks of work.
Obviously, players must play in the game to earn the money,
Hand out prizes and cash rewards to players in different categories.
Most Valuable Player
Best Highlight Play
Best Celebration
Most Pancakes(sponsored by IHOP)
Best Pregame Outfit
Everything could be calculated to drive more TV views because fans are expecting a great show.
Incentivize Coaches
Like it or not, coaches have a lot of control over the flow of a game. They can make it super boring, run the football, and grind out the game.
To prevent this, you could come up with a framework to help the coaching staff have some fun too.
Trick Plays
Everyone loves a good trick play.
Similar to our structure with the players, if you could find a way to pay the coaches per trick play, I think that would make for a super entertaining football game.
Imagine a game with a trick play on every drive. Fake punts, field goals, and onside kicks.
Passing Attack
It would be key to get two teams in who love to throw the football. It’s almost always more exciting when teams score lots and move the ball up and down the field.
Here at The Steel Road we love the troops, but let’s keep Army, Navy and Air Force out of this bowl game.
The Venue
Like I mentioned earlier, not a lot of fans are coming to bowl games these days, so it would be prudent to select a venue with smaller capacity. The key will be making sure you have the infrastructure to pull off an incredible experience for those watching the game on TV.
Partner with a streaming service like Amazon Prime or Peacock as a title sponsor or to cover the game.
Use drones to create incredible sky cam like shots to follow the action.
The Commentators
A partnership with Pat Mcafee and the boys would make for a killer streaming event. Get away from the stuffy suits and vanilla broadcast coverage that fans are used to seeing.
Use on field player interviews like the XFL used to do to help the players be more involved in the coverage.
As I wrote this it turned into more of a wish-list of what a Bowl Game should be. But could you imagine watching the bowl game described above?