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One negative of the College Football Playoff field expanding to 12 teams this season — with even more bracket bloat sure to come — is the accelerating decline of interest and impact stirred by bowl games not included in the growing playoff picture.

Instead of ignoring or attempting to argue with this reality, the creators of these non-CFP bowl pairings need to react accordingly. They need to up their games.

Just as the rise of name, image and likeness cash making its way to college players should, hopefully, if the contracts are written well, work to slow the stream of players opting out of non-playoff bowl games, the bowl games themselves can modernize to better move the needle.

The best way to do it?

Prioritize opponent pairings that fire up programs, players and fans.

If the non-CFP bowls look at the current state of the college football landscape through an opportunistic lens, they can take advantage of trends instead of letting themselves become victims to them.

Conference realignment has paused historic rivalries fans dearly miss. Conference bloat has made it impossible for certain leagues to create games between all members.

Bowl games with the flexibility of picking who plays in them should rush to scratch those growing itches.

If we have learned anything in college sports lately, it’s that no rule that exists today is unchangeable tomorrow. One that should absolutely change moving forward is this notion that teams from the same league can’t square off in a non-playoff bowl game.

How many Mizzou fans would like to see their Tigers get another shot at Texas A&M if the Aggies fall out of the CFP picture? How many Mizzou fans would like to see a game against one of the SEC teams the Tigers didn’t get a chance to play this season due to the elimination of divisions and the continued swell of the league’s size? A game between Mizzou and former defensive coordinator Blake Baker’s LSU comes to mind.

A smart bowl would pitch SEC commissioner Greg Sankey on this idea, and he would be wise to once again lead the industry in adapting first. Would the coaches like another conference game added to their schedule? Probably not. But fans would. And fans, at the end of the day, still pay for the coaches, the players, the facilities and so on.

Unfortunately, it’s too late for this to happen this season. Bowls have current contractual obligations locked in. So what, realistically, would be the most compelling matchup for Mizzou?

As Post-Dispatch Mizzou beat writer Eli Hoff detailed in his breakdown of where Mizzou could go bowling, an opponent from the Big Ten, Big 12, ACC or Pac-12 (including that league’s most recent departures) seems most likely. And yes, there still is enough wiggle room that could result in Mizzou getting a bowl game that lacks confined contractual obligations with conferences, meaning a wild-card option could be in play.

In short, it’s all up in the air. Ultimately, it will be Sankey who decides, with feedback from Mizzou.

The best two options should be obvious.

Mizzou and Illinois. First meeting since 2010. A preview of a relaunched series that begins again in 2026. Two tough quarterbacks. Football Braggin’ Rights.

Sign me up. This would be a much more interesting game than Mizzou playing the boring Michigan team that lost to Illinois.

There’s another I’d like just as much, if not more: Kansas State. A third meeting between the old Big 12 foes for the third consecutive season would be intense. The Wildcats won the 2022 game by a landslide. The Tigers won the 2023 one by a hair, thanks to Harrison Mevis’ record-setting leg.

Mizzou is No. 23 in the CFP rankings. Kansas State is the first team on the outside. This one would feel plenty big. Bigger, even, than Mizzou playing Kansas.

The Jayhawks are unlikely to be bowl eligible at 4-6 with Colorado and Baylor left. Plus, Mizzou and KU restart their football rivalry next season.

Or how about Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz against former Tigers coach Barry Odom, who has his UNLV Rebels at 8-2 with two regular-season games to go? Odom is 17-7 at a place that was supposed to be where football coaching careers go to die. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as some Mizzou fans prefer to believe?

Add Arizona into the chaos category as well, though it’s unlikely former Mizzou athletics director Desiree Reed-Francois’ Wildcats will go bowling. They would need to win out to punch a ticket, and Arizona State looms.

With UNLV or Arizona, the Mizzou message boards would be melting, which is a lot better than inducing yawns.

There are two components for non-CFP bowl games to matter moving forward:

Players have to play.

Fans have to care.

The best way to accomplish both is to create pairings that get people talking. Failure to do that means these games continue to fade.