Why are there so many college football bowl games? How the postseason’s grown since 1902

The Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl will be staged at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.

December means the end of the college football season for teams across the country. Rivalry week ushers in the start of the month with conference championship games welcoming fans after the Thanksgiving holiday.

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 the Army-Navy game, 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.

Full guide for fans: College football bowl game schedule for the 2023-24 season

How many bowl games are there?

The first signs of bowl expansion began in the…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/why-many-college-football-bowl-232316188.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2023-12-15 23:23:16

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