Remember when this time of year was called the “holiday season?” It doesn’t seem that long ago. Between Thanksgiving and New Year, we would visit family and friends, eat too much and sing holiday songs.
Now it’s bowl season. Every day there’s a different college football bowl game. No longer do you wonder what to buy Aunt Edie for Christmas, now you only care about how much to wager on that Sun Belt team in that bowl game being played in Charlotte, or Albuquerque, or the Bahamas (it’s coming back next year!).
How did we get to this point? What happened that brought us so many games?
The explosion of college football bowl games
Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK
This growth of college football bowl games was gradual at first. In 1970, there were 11 college football bowl games. By 1980, we were up to 15 and by 1990, we had 19. And at that time, we thought that was a lot.
Then the number shot up faster than housing prices, going from 25 in 2000 to 35 in 2010 and 41 by 2015.
In 1970, it was hard to make a bowl game. These days, we’re scrambling to find enough teams to fill the slots.
There are 42 bowl games this year and while that is a lot, think about this, there are more than 100 that don’t exist anymore.
What is behind the massive growth of college football bowl games?
The obvious reason for this rapid growth is money. There is a lot more of that going around than in 1970.
Let’s start with the networks, or just one network, ESPN. College football bowl games are a cash cow for the Disney-owned network. About the only thing that people watch on live TV is sporting events, and football is the most popular sporting event to watch.
So the more football games, the better. ESPN got 22+ million viewers on the college football playoff semifinals last year. It got millions of viewers on most games (3.5 million watched the Gasparilla Bowl!).
Those are good numbers to sell to advertisers. So when you wonder why ESPN is showing Jacksonville State (most people don’t know that this school isn’t in Florida) vs. Louisiana, remember to follow the money.
Coaches are on board with college football bowl game growth
Every college football coach pads his resume with bowl game appearances. If you’re coaching at Small School U. and take your team to three straight bowl games, well, then, Power 5 AD whose team went 3-9 last year is flying in to see you.
Once you get to Power 5 school, you better keep going to those bowl games, mister. That’s because college football bowl games on TV are recruiting gold.
It’s also part of contract negotiations for the coach to brag about how many bowl games his teams have made. A win in a bowl means the coach can tell his boss (and recruits), “We won our last game.”
Oh, and let’s not forget that the boosters want to travel to exotic places to watch the team play live (the definition of exotic changes, of course, depending on what’s at stake with said bowl. Fenway Park is great for a Red Sox vs. Yankees game, but for a football game at the end of December?).
College football bowl game payouts
Then there are bowl payouts. Those range from a few hundred thousand to millions.
Some teams will lose money by playing in a bowl game. It will cost more than the $225,000 payout to take a plane full of people to the Bahamas to play a football game (that game comes back next year!). But, remember, that game is on TV!
Others make a good chunk of change. Alabama made $2 million more for making the College Football Playoff than playing in a New Year’s Six game.
Here are the payouts for the college football bowl games this year.
| Bowl | Matchup | Pay out |
| Myrtle Beach Bowl | Georgia Southern vs. Ohio | Unannounced |
| Cricket Celebration Bowl | Florida A&M vs. Howard | $2,000,000 |
| R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl | Jacksonville State vs. Louisiana | $825,000 |
| Avocados from Mexico Cure Bowl | Miami (Ohio) vs. Appalachian State | $573,125 |
| New Mexico Bowl | New Mexico State vs. Fresno State | $1,050,000 |
| L.A. Bowl Hosted by Gronk | Boise State vs. UCLA | Unannounced |
| Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl | Texas Tech vs. Cal | $2,200,000 |
| Famous Toastery Bowl | Western Kentucky vs. Old Dominion | $225,000 |
| Frisco Bowl | UTSA vs. Marshall | $650,000 |
| Boca Raton Bowl | South Florida vs. Syracuse | $900,000 |
| Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl | UCF vs. Georgia Tech | $1,125,000 |
| Camellia Bowl | Arkansas State vs. Northern Illinois | $300,000 |
| 76® Birmingham Bowl | Troy vs. Duke | $1,374,545 |
| Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl | James Madison vs. Air Force | $1,350,000 |
| Famous Idaho Potato Bowl | Utah State vs. Georgia State | $800,000 |
| 68 Ventures Bowl | South Alabama vs. Eastern Michigan | $1,500,000 |
| Las Vegas Bowl | Northwestern vs. Utah | $2,900,000 |
| Easypost Hawai’i Bowl | Coastal Carolina vs. San Jose State | $1,200,000 |
| Quick Lane Bowl | Bowling Green vs. Minnesota | $2,000,000 |
| Servpro First Responder Bowl | Texas State vs. Rice | $824,545 |
| Guaranteed Rate Bowl | UNLV vs. Kansas | $1,625,560 |
| Military Bowl Presented by Peraton | Virginia Tech vs. Tulane | $2,066,990 |
| Duke’s Mayo Bowl | North Carolina vs. West Virginia | $4,780,461 |
| The DIRECTV Holiday Bowl | Louisville vs. Southern Cal | $6,532,700 |
| Taxact Texas Bowl | Oklahoma State vs. Texas A&M | $6,400,000 |
| Fenway Bowl | SMU vs. Boston College | Unannounced |
| Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl | Miami vs. Rutgers | $4,400,000 |
| Pop-Tarts Bowl | Kansas State vs. North Carolina State | $6,071,760 |
| Valero Alamo Bowl | Oklahoma vs. Arizona | $8,252,740 |
| Taxslayer Gator Bowl | Clemson vs. Kentucky | $5,350,000 |
| Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl | Notre Dame vs. Oregon State | $4,550,000 |
| Autozone Liberty Bowl | Iowa State vs. Memphis | $4,700,000 |
| Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic | Missouri vs. Ohio State | $4,000,000 |
| Chick-fil-a Peach Bowl | Ole Miss vs. Penn State | $4,000,000 |
| Transperfect Music City Bowl | Auburn vs. Maryland | $5,700,000 |
| Capital One Orange Bowl | Georgia vs. Florida State | $4,000,000 |
| Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl | Toledo vs. Wyoming | $350,000 |
| Reliaquest Bowl | Wisconsin vs. LSU | $6,400,000 |
| Fiesta Bowl | Liberty vs. Oregon | $4,000,000 |
| Citrus Bowl | Tennessee vs. Iowa | $8,224,578 |
| Rose Bowl (Semifinal) | Alabama vs. Michigan | $6,000,000 |
| Allstate Sugar Bowl (Semifinal) | Texas vs. Washington | $6,000,000 |
| 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship (NRG Stadium, Houston) | Peach winner vs. Fiesta winner | No Additional |
As you can see, that’s a long list of games and there doesn’t seem to be any signs that we’ll lose any. In fact, we could get more.
Games have been proposed in places from Cincinnati to Hershey, Pennsylvania, Australia to Dubai.
That means more opportunities for more teams to play on TV. More chances to show off for recruits. More ways to make money.