To be completely fair and honest, bowl games were originally intended as sort of a post-season reward/vacation for the players. Only very small handful of these games have any bearing on the national championship.

To be even more honest, of late - most of the host cities have these post-season games to boost their local economies. Living near Jacksonville, I heard a city official promoting that city's upcoming bowl game (no longer called the Gator Bowl - now named after some corporate tax-preparer service) stating that Jacksonville could have gone for teams with better won/loss records but opted instead for a couple of teams whose fans and supporters tend to travel to road games. Jacksonville is more interested in filling up hotel rooms and restaurants - and that's a smart thing on their behalf.

I'm a University of Alabama fan. I have traveled to many cities to see my team play post-season. Part of the play-off system that I am curious about: how many fans and supporters can afford MULTIPLE post season road trips to see their team play? I know the "Bammers" will travel to New Orleans (a very popular city for Bama) - but should they win there, how many can afford another road trip to Dallas for the championship game? Same for the fans of the other finalist school.

this is a fun game, I play in the "420 or bust" group.

I just created another group called "Allman Brothers Band" if anyone wants to play.

http://games.espn.go.com/college-bowl-mania/2014/en/

[Edited on 12/9/2014 by LeglizHemp]

It will only make the bowl games less important for the bigger schools when the playoff likely moves to 8 teams somewhere in the future. Right now schools like TCU and Baylor who are going to great bowl games can't be too happy because of being left out of the playoff. I figure in a few years after they see how much money a 4 team playoff brings in, then there will be a push for 8 teams. Once that happens anyone of the top 15 teams will only care about the playoffs and the bowls will greatly suffer. As a fan, I like the playoff. Let's decide this thing on the field. I think the committee that does the rankings need some work though.

The bowl games for smaller schools are still a reward for a good season. However once the regular season went to 12 games a few years back suddenly 6-6 teams are getting in bowl games it waters it down. A 6-6 Tennessee is going to get a better bowl slot than a 8 or 9 win school like a Western Michigan because Tennessee has a name, is an SEC school and a fan base that will travel to the bowl games especially since they haven't been to one in a couple of years.

I love all the bowl games and Bowl Week is a great way to spend the time between Christmas and New Year's.

As far as the number, oversaturation really isn't an issue. There's plenty of teams to get to play in bowls.

There is a key, key, key thing to remember about the "lesser" bowls...notice that ESPN/ABC televises 95% of them? There's a reason for that. A very, very, very profitable reason.

So you are flipping channels and notice that the Thrifty Rent-A-Car Whatever Bowl is on in some stadium somewhere, and it looks like there's all of 5,000 people there. You wonder "How are they making any money on these bowls that no one even goes to?"

Here's the kicker...for all of those bowls, attendance does not matter. Those half empty stadiums are essentially giant TV studios.

People take time off during the holidays and watch more TV, but people are also out and about. They go out more, go out to eat more, etc. Now, with that in mind, think about any time you are at a casual restaurant/sports bar, like a Buffalo Wild Wings, Applebee's, local chains of sports bars, or bars themselves. Pretty much wherever there's a TV. What's the one single commonality about all of those TVs in all those public places? A vast majority of the time, the TV or TVs in those establishments, ESPN is on one if not more of those TVs.

So, if you are out shopping with people and you stop to eat or have a drink and you look up and South Georgia State is playing Montana A&M in the Gingerbread Bowl and they go to commerical...BOOM! Got yer eyeballs on that Lexus commercial!

More TVs, more eyeballs. More eyeballs, higher ad rates charged. Higher ad rates collected, more profit for ESPN/ABC/Disney/Hearst...and the amount of eyeballs on each game is not even comparable to who is actually in the stadium. The stadium could be completely empty, for that matter. Actually, when looking at it in a strict eyeball count context, it really doesn't matter who is even playing in the game.

It's no coincidence that ESPN/ABC locked up 95% of the bowls around the same time the technology improved to where they could really track who is watching what.

Serious, serious money in play here. The future will probably bring more bowls, not less.

So you are flipping channels and notice that the Thrifty Rent-A-Car Whatever Bowl is on in some stadium somewhere, and it looks like there's all of 5,000 people there. You wonder "How are they making any money on these bowls that no one even goes to?"

Here's the kicker...for all of those bowls, attendance does not matter. Those half empty stadiums are essentially giant TV studios.

Where it does matter is in the cities that these bowls are held. If the crowd is huge then it's a huge money maker, however when they get a matchup that doesn't draw it can be a big loser as well.

Also when a school gets it's allotment of bowl tickets, any tickets that don't sell they have to buy themselves. Plenty of schools have taken a loss during bowl season due to the travel expenses and not selling enough tickets and having to eat the rest of the tickets that were not sold.

Two places to talk college football on the ABB forum!! Awesome.

My love of college football is right up there with family and life itself so I am probably pretty biased to give an opinion on these games. You could say that I even love college football more than some family as I typically succeed in getting out of weddings and birthday parties on football Saturdays. I have even not gone to an ABB show when it is a college football Saturday! After qualifying myself I will say that this looks like the best bowl season ever! Start on December 27th and look through Jan 2nd - 22 of 23 of those games are must watch TV for me.

I do believe that for a bowl game should be a reward for a good season (what I always thought they were intended to be), that only teams with winning records should qualify.

But rather than the bowls being a reward for the teams, they have just turned into huge money makers for the TV people. I mean it is still a reward that players and teams state as a goal and look forward to even though it has been reported that the schools often lose money on their bowl expenses even after getting their share of TV revenue, but they continue to do it for the exposure the university gets even if they lose money on a net basis.

It's already been said that when the 12 game schedule came in, not enough teams every year would have a true winning record of 7-5 to qualify - or atleast not the right winning teams. This year there are 64 teams with winning records, however not all of them are in bowls. Navy can get their 7th win Saturday. 18 others are .500. Teams with winning records not in bowls App St, Georgia Southern (neither are eligible yet for bowls as part of a NCAA transition process) and Texas St. But even if App St were eligible they may not have gotten chosen for the same reason Texas St did not get picked. Even in a field of so many obscure teams to the general public Sun Belt teams are pretty much the bottom of the barrel. But if they want to add more bowls they can. 5 6-6 teams didn't make the cut this year.

As long as the bowls make money for the people putting it on they will continue in such large numbers and possibly even continue to grow.

The top 4 do not play till 1-1-15 . They are off almost three weeks and the final game is on the 12th of January.

It has been atleast this long as long as I remember. For most teams in the 1990s, 80s, 70s and on back the season ended in November and the bowls were always New Year's Day. So the time off has typically been the same. It has not been until the last 14 years maybe that the extra week of time past January 1st has come into effect for a handful of games.

It will only make the bowl games less important for the bigger schools when the playoff likely moves to 8 teams somewhere in the future.

Which is creeping death for me. I'd be happy to explain further in the WP 😉

Last year Western Kentucky was 8-4 and was passed over for several 6-6 teams.

Temple went 8-4 a few years back and was passed over for 6-6 teams. I think they need to go back to the old rule protecting all 7 win teams before 6-6 teams can even be eligible to be selected by any bowl. And not allow conference tie-in contracts to overrule the 7-win protection either.

I believe the only way a losing team can be bowl eligible is to go 500 in the regular season and somehow still make the conference championship, and then lose the conference championship game. Or get a waiver from NCAA. I'm not sure how I feel about that. My gut reaction is that no losing record should be bowl eligible. Period. But to finish 2nd in a conference and not get a bowl bid seems odd too, but that most likely only happens when conference teams with better records are on probation. I dunno.

I think a quarter-final playoff is inevitable, and on one hand I like the concept a lot. If you're going to have an officially crowned "national champion", then it should be a playoff. Otherwise, just don't have any crowned champion and leave it to the polls like it was in the early 1990s before the Bowl Coalition/Alliance/BCS. You're always going to wind up with controversy though at the cut-off point, whether that is #4 or #8 or #12 or wherever the arbitrary number is set.

The other thing with a quarterfinal playoff is how to do it without decimating the overall bowl system and remaining bowl games. I think the only way you can do that is by somehow incorporating the bowls into the 7 game playoff, but then you risk destroying the history and tradition of the conference tie-ins. They've added the Cotton and Peach Bowls to the 4 old BCS bowls, so I guess they could add Gator, Citrus, Outback or a few others. But the first round would need to be in late December, so there's that too.