Utah's Morgan Scalley wants to save bowl games, fix the calendar

FRISCO, TX – The bounce in the left leg never stops across a 16-minute interview.

And Morgan Scalley is calling his first year as a college football head coach a 400-meter run; it’s no 40-yard dash that usually follows football assessments.

Utah’s coach has a vision for building the Utes that he formulates with general manager Joe D’Arozio most recently a key cog in Lincoln Riley’s Southern California operation.

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Scalley, though, also is ready to share a vision to save college football’s bowl system.

“I am a big fan of bowl games Week 0; you keep the bowl sponsors happy, guys aren’t opting out, it’s good against good,” Scalley, energy in everything he does, exclusively tells USA TODAY Sports in a visit at Big 12 Conference Media Days. “You put bowl games Week 0.

“And you have a 24-team playoff, so those games don’t necessarily hurt you if you lose and everyone’s fired up. And a 24-team playoffs, you don’t make the playoffs, you are done; your season’s over with.

The concept floated to USA TODAY Sports is to conduct bowl games similar to the Player’s Era Tournament in college basketball, with a direct financial incentive for participating teams’ NIL and rev-share funding components.

Both Scalley and Arizona’s Brent Brennan embrace that concept.

Scalley points specifically to the failing finances increasing in college athletics, with Louisville among power Conference programs revealing a massive deficit in its athletics’ bottom line.

“I mean, shoot, teams are losing money. Programs are losing money,” Scalley says. “I think that would do quite a bit to help alleviate that.

“But again, I just think you get to the end of the season, and kids are opting out, and these bowl games have been so special. They’ve been so awesome. Let’s preserve it. Let’s put them early where everyone’s going to want to play.”

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Like Scalley, Brennan believes the college football season needs to conclude closer to the New Year’s holiday – the 2026 College Football Playoff Championship is set for Jan. 25, 2027 – that many teams will lean into the NCAA’s new measure that allows all teams to participate in Week Zero contests beginning with the 2027 season.

Brennan’s former program, San Jose State, opens this season with a Week Zero game Aug. 29 at Big Ten program USC – a date that USC officials had proposed to Notre Dame as a de facto bowl contest to be aired on a streaming service, such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, USC officials previously confirmed to USA TODAY Sports.

If Week 0 games in the future are bowls and there’s money for the student-athletes?

“I think it’d be great if that was a way to benefit the players, and we could still keep bowl games as part of the college football fabric,” Brennan tells USA TODAY Sports. “I think that’d be cool.”