This article was published in the December issue of The Hoof Print, which is the school newspaper at Alamo Heights High School.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Wait, you thought I meant the holiday season? I’m talking about college football bowl season, which is two glorious weeks of non-stop college football. Meanwhile, school is out for almost the entirety of the bowl schedule. It truly doesn’t get any better than that.
The history of bowl games dates back to the early 1900’s in Pasadena, California. To garner national attention for the annual Tournament of Roses Parade held in Pasadena, organizers of the festival looked to college football and on Jan. 1, 1902, they staged a match-up between the best teams from the east and the west. Michigan State, a college football powerhouse, steamrolled Stanford in front of 8,000 fans. The game was such a blowout that the East vs. West match-up didn’t return for 14 years, but when it did return, more and more fans began to show up. In 1923, the game moved to the brand new stadium in Pasadena called the Rose Bowl, and a “bowl game” tradition on New Year’s Day was born.
As popularity for the Rose Bowl increased, other warm weather cities jumped in on the action and scheduled college football games on New Year’s Day to attract visitors during the winter. The Festival of Palms Bowl, now known as the Orange Bowl, debuted in 1933, and classics we all watch today such as the Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Sun Bowl all launched in the following years. In 1937, there were six bowl games on New Year’s Day, and bowl season has continued to grow ever since.
This year there are 40–yes, 40 bowl games scheduled. The bowl bonanza begins on Dec. 16 with the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl and ends on Jan. 8 with the College Football Playoff National Championship Game in Atlanta at the brand new Mercedes Benz Stadium. In between, there are traditional games such as the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl but there are also some wildly named corporate owned games like the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.
A new twist to bowl season is the College Football Playoff, which is now in its fourth year. During the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) era, a computer would decide the top two teams in the nation that would face off in the National Championship. Now, however, a committee of 12 members chooses four teams to make the College Football Playoff, and those four teams play in semifinal games with the winners advancing to the championship. Six bowl games are part of the Playoff rotation and this year the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl will host the Playoff semifinals with the winners advancing to Atlanta.
Something I look forward to every year is the college football bowl pick’em, where I select who I think will win each of the 40 bowls and the championship. I don’t just choose the games and see how I do; I get really into it. Every year I make an effort to watch at least some portion of every bowl. It’s a fun way to make games that I otherwise wouldn’t have too much interest in exciting, since I have something on the line. It’s similar to the incredibly popular March Madness brackets that everyone fills out for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Getting every game right seems impossible, but I’ll never stop trying. All I’ve ever wanted is to escape the first Saturday with perfect picks, but college football is so unpredictable that it’s even difficult to do that.
The intriguing thing about college football is that, unlike most sports, where winning the championship is the one and only goal, reaching a bowl game can mean everything to a school. Take UTSA as an example. The Roadrunners didn’t field a football team until 2011 and as they transitioned into the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), which is where all the major Division I schools play, they weren’t allowed to make a bowl until 2014. In 2016, the Roadrunners defeated Charlotte in their last regular season game to become bowl eligible for the first time in school history. For a school that only had a team for five years, qualifying for a bowl was a massive accomplishment. It may not have been the national championship, but for UTSA, playing in the New Mexico Bowl was like playing in the Super Bowl.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, some programs see anything less than a playoff appearance as a disappointment. Alabama has been in all three playoffs thus far and could be looking at a fourth, and other teams such as Clemson and Ohio State have also made it to the playoff multiple times. There are still very prestigious bowls, however, that aren’t a part of the playoff. Excluding the bowls that are the playoff semifinals, which rotates every year, leaves four of the “Big Six” bowls. This year those are the Cotton, Peach, Orange and Fiesta Bowls. The “Power Five” conferences normally have tie-ins where the conference champion automatically goes to the assigned bowl if that team doesn’t qualify for the playoff. The Big 12 has historically sent their champion to the Fiesta Bowl while the Orange Bowl hosts the ACC and Big 10 champions, though the Playoff has made it less of a guarantee that the traditional bowl tie-ins are fulfilled.
No matter who you root for, bowl season provides exciting football throughout the holiday season. When there’s nothing to do over winter break, bundle up at home, grab some snacks and enjoy some entertaining college football.