I can’t say I’m broken up about this, but is this a sign of another fading star of the college football season?
I have to admit there were some good Bahamas Bowls, particularly the one with one of the Michigan team against one of the Kentucky teams (maybe they were both Western?) scoring close to a hundred points in a game. It was a fun mid-major bowl to watch, from what I can remember, though I have no memories about LA or Detroit Bowls, if I’m being honest.
The purest will be quick to argue that bowl games disappearing is another casualty of college football playoff expansion (which is a contributing factor, to be sure), but how “traditional” are all these bowl games anyway? Considering that it all started with a single bowl game – The Rose Bowl – in 1901, here’s a quick look at the quick increase in the number since the Inaugural Rose:
- 1901 – 1 bowl game – Rose Bowl
- 1930s-1940s – 5 bowl games – Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, and Sun
- 1960s – 14 bowl games – The Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Cotton start being played on New Years’ Day…plus the Gator Bowl, Sun, Bluebonnet Bowl, Liberty Bowl (in Philadelphia originally), Tangerine Bowl, Peach Bowl, and Pasadena Bowl (Rose Bowl, Jr). A few others that only lasted a year or two were the Aviator Bowl in Dayton, Ohio, the Gotham Bowl in New York, and the Mercy Bowl in LA.
- 1970s – 11 – Added the Fiesta Bowl, Pasadena Bowl died.
- 1980s – 15ish – Added the Holiday Bowl, Copper Bowl, Aloha Bowl, and Independence Bowl. Hall of Fame Bowl started in Tampa. Also had some short-lived bowl games – Garden State (NJ), Freedom Bowl (CA), California Bowl (Fresno), and Cherry Bowl in Pontiac, Michigan).
- 1990s – 19 – Added the Blockbuster Bowl in Miami, Las Vegas Bowl, Motor City Bowl, and Music City Bowls.
- 2000s – BCS Era and National Championship game; vacillated around 25 games to 35 games with the addition of numerous mid-tier bowl games. Also, this is the rise of the Worldwide Leader in Sports, as ESPN was acquired by Disney in 1996, so no wonder Bowl Season blossomed.
- 2010 – 35 Bowls
- 2015 – upwards of 43 bowls
- 2025 – Around 42 bowls
The past season featured lots of opt-outs, last minute scheduling, and lots of empty stands. Something tells me that once you’ve seen your team slog through a middling 6-6 or 5-7 season, you want mercy to set in and not see any more.
Mickey, on the other hand, can’t get enough of it and love running those ratings numbers out after the Cheez-Its Bowl on the socials.
Anyway, I’m rambling…the question is, can it be the death of a tradition when it hasn’t been a tradition that long? The glut of 84 of 136 teams (62% of teams will be in a bowl, let that sink in) making a bowl when they’d likely rather go home for the holidays, along with their fans, often makes for an unappetizing competition, to say the least.
So how do you feel? Behave, you scamps.
Bowls games are just to fill programming time at ESPN.
I would say Mickey is, in fact, getting enough of it – both the Bahama Bowl and Detroit Bowl were shown on ESPN networks, and if ESPN wanted to keep them as programming, they’d have found a way to make the money work. We are beyond the saturation point, as can be seen with the empty upper deck at the Fiesta Bowl and a flood of below-face Sugar Bowl tickets available the past two years.
We didn’t fill the Belk Bowl in 2014, although we filled the Florida bowls in 2011, ’12 and ’15 (did not attend ’13 Gator Bowl). I doubt we would do that today, and Jax/Tampa/Orlando are 5-8 hour drives away for most of us.
Are we spoiled? Yeah, that probably has something to do with it, but there is just not enough time or money to invest in going to mid-bowl games anymore, and without the crowd, there is just not the same “juice” for the players, coaches or TV, IMO….
If teams want to play in them and people want to watch, knock yourselves out. I don’t think I ever I watched a minute of the Detroit Bowl (or whatever it’s called). Why be a fan of one of the teams just to hear the commentators talk about the upcoming playoff games ad nauseum?
The only reason to have the bowl games is to get a good laugh when the theme of the Handbags’ football season is “There’s No Place like Home for the Holidays.”
Any team with 6 wins should have to watch the 2008 Sun Bowl on loop for 24 hours before getting a bowl invite.
Reckon there’s more value in buying players in NIL and suing for extra years than there is in Bowl Practices. Sad that Popeye’s quit the Bahamas Bowl, it was hilarious and probably the canary in the coal mine for what we’re barfing about today.
I’m all for as many bowls as they want, and I’ll usually watch them, including the ones in Detroit. I think I watched Minnesota beat the nerds there one year.
I’m equally sure the “Bahamas” Bowl was shot on a green screen in a Bristol, CT warehouse. There were always the same 12 “fans” in the “stands”.
I’m the biggest college football fan there is. I run a small “bowl pool” annually for the past 40 years. This year, it was exclusively the “12 team playoff”. My guys that participated wanted this option v 30+ meaningless bowl games by which players and coaches have opted out. Honestly, for the first time in my life, I did not watch one meaningless bowl game!
I watched the Pop Tart Bowl for no real reason other than it being sort of a parody of a bowl game. TB your post will be an evergreen observation on how we lost it all. SAD
I sense Pontiac,MI is in contract negotiations for one of the permanent rotating sites to host playoff games. You don’t really think the idiots in charge are going to allow home games do you? Goodwill is going to be receiving a lot of tacky, dandruff littered sport coats from ex-bowl organizers.
Not much interest this last season. Watch to see teams l can’t stand (ie tech) get beat. Y’all know what l say,l Hate Everybody but us!!!
Play the bowl games in the spring after the transfer portal closes and draft declarations and use them as a data point for preseason rankings. With the way the playoff is expanding that will more than fill the holiday bowl void.
One of the better suggestions I’ve heard (lately with NCAA football it’s a low bar) is to play the bowl games in the infuriatingly named “Week Zero” to get the basis for preseason rankings. That way at least they’re not playing the non-FL/AZ bowls in the snow.
I’ve always wondered who thought playing a bowl game in Detroit was a good idea. I mean, it’s Detroit, in December. I guess Mogadishu was booked solid.