Why are there so many college football bowl games? How the postseason's grown since 1902
Dozens of FBS teams will play one more game in December to close the 2023 season
Ayrton Ostly
December means the end of the college football season for teams across the country. However, for the millions who will sit down and watch one bowl game after another, the fun is just getting started.
Once the dust settles from the conference title deciders, there's at least one last game for dozens of schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS): a bowl game. A tradition dating back more than 100 years sees teams with at least six wins and a 0.500 winning percentage by season's end get one more chance to play on TV.
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By the early 2010s, there were so many bowl games that the yearly tradition even spurned a Saturday Night Live parody. This year, bowl season includes more than 40 bowl games and the College Football Playoff National Championship. Here's how we got here.
What was the first college football bowl game?
The Rose Bowl was the first college football bowl game and started on Jan. 1, 1902. The 11-0 Michigan Wolverines beat Stanford 49-0 that day and thus began a century-old tradition. There's a reason why legendary broadcaster Keith Jackson called it "The Granddaddy of Them All."
The Rose Bowl remained the only college bowl game for decades. In the 1920s, a few other games had short tenures. The Fort Worth Classic saw one game in the 1921 season; the San Diego East-West Christmas Classic had a short run from 1921-22; the Los Angeles Christmas Festival made one appearance in 1924; the Dixie Classic had the longest run of them all from 1922 to 1934.
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How many bowl games are there?
The first signs of bowl expansion began in the 1930s as multiple bowl games still running today saw their first matchups. The 1934 season saw the first Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl matchups. A year later the Sun Bowl had its first appearance and the first Cotton Bowl between Marquette and TCU took place in the 1936 season.
Many bowl games through the 1940s and 1950s were around for less than five total games. Exceptions include the Gator (starting in 1945), Citrus (1946), Camellia (1948), and Liberty (1959) Bowls.
A gradual increase in the following decades brought bowl season past 20 games by 2000. It's increased much faster in the last two decades. By 2006, college football passed 30 bowl games; in 2015, the sport passed 40.
Expansion's slowed in the last decade. For the 2023 season, college football teams will play 42 bowl games.
Why are there so many bowl games?
Recent bowl game expansion has taken place almost entirely on ESPN and ABC, part of the The Walt Disney Company umbrella of channels. They're a great source of revenue as companies spend more on advertising around the holidays presuming more people are likely to have time off from work and will spend time watching more college football.
As of 2019, the Rose Bowl generated an estimated $33.9 million in ad revenue, according to Standard Media Index data. That paled in comparison to the College Football Playoff games at a combined $176.3 million over three games that season. Those numbers will likely be higher; last year's New Year's Six bowl games were the most-watched New Year's Six in three years, per ESPN data.
Even the non-New Year's Six bowls garner millions in views. ESPN reports last year's Gator, Cheez-It, Alamo, Liberty, and Gasparilla Bowls all had at least three million viewers.
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This year, the vast majority of bowl games - 39 of 42 - will be broadcast on Disney-owned ESPN or ABC again. The exceptions are the Holiday Bowl on FOX, the Sun Bowl on CBS, and the Arizona Bowl on the CW/Barstool Sports.
If that wasn't enough, the college football postseason will expand again next year. The College Football Playoff will go from four to 12 teams and ESPN revenue will likely jump once again as tens of millions of people watch more postseason college football. There's no incentive to play fewer bowl games so long as viewership and ad revenue remain high.
