NCAA Reportedly Approves 3-Year Moratorium on New Bowl Games

College football's bowl bonanza is stopping at 41 games. For now.

The NCAA reportedly approved a three-year moratorium on adding bowl games, lasting through the 2019 season, per ESPN.com's Brett McMurphy; CBSSports.com's Jon Solomon confirmed the decision. The move comes after the 2015 campaign saw three teams—Nebraska, Minnesota and San Jose State—earn bowl berths despite posting losing records.

In previous years, bowl eligibility has typically been granted only to teams with .500 records or better. McMurphy's report noted only four teams in the previous 45 years had played in bowl games with losing records.

This is, of course, a product of the ever-expanding bowl schedule. Forty-one bowl games require 80 teams to post a record of .500 or better given that two teams move on to the national championship. That's simple math.

As of now, there are 128 FBS teams. That means 62.5 percent of all FBS teams will have to finish .500 or better to fulfill bowl requirements. Given the fact that there is only one loss and one win assigned per game, that seems like an unrealistic goal.

There are enough cupcake opponents available that most seasons will see college football scrape to that number or get close, but this problem isn't going away.

"Clearly, the system is broken," Mountain West Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson said in December, per Nancy Armour of USA Today. "There is an excess of bowl games due in part to a disparate allocation of openings vs. conference bowl histories. The result is teams with sub-.500 records participating in bowl games. There is consensus change is needed and this year's outcome must not be repeated."

There are a few realistic solutions. The NCAA can undergo a massive expansion of FBS teams. A number of FCS schools are capable of moving up and at least competing at a mid-major level right now. Expansion would make it far more mathematically plausible to fill the current 41 games and whatever additions the NCAA wants to make going forward.

The second easy option is to simply stop creating new bowl games altogether. Attendance has been trending downward for years. Having more empty seats than filled ones is a common occurrence for low-level bowl games at this point.

Fans are hesitant to make travel arrangements to far-off locations for an essentially meaningless game at the end of the season. Schools also risk losing money on bowl games if they're unable to fulfill their ticket-selling expectations. This isn't a major problem for schools in big conferences but can be a headache for lower-level schools that are barely keeping their head above water with their football programs.

Unfortunately, bowl expansion is probably inevitable. McMurphy's report noted three cities (Austin, Texas; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina) were already in the process of creating bowls for the 2016 season. The last bowl moratorium ended in 2014, with six new games being added to the slate.

Fans may not be coming out in droves for these games, but they draw far better television ratings than your typical random evening programming. Still, television partner ESPN already had to contend with unhappy advertisers after lower-than-expected ratings this past season. This feels like a bubble that's about to burst if the two parties remain committed to expansion.