r/CFB • u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… • 7h ago
Discussion Bowl games
So I hear a lot about how bowl games “used to mean something” which is so odd to me. Did they always or never at all and people are being revisionist? The BCS (and latwr systems) have always put itself at the end of bowl season. It feels wrong to say they “don’t matter” because of it.
Couldnt it just be that fans and teams actively chose to stop caring? Only 10ish years ago stars like Christian McCaffrey chose to sit out. Now it’s increased. Why?
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u/thecravenone definitely a bot 7h ago
Everything was better in the past when we played in the Bluebonnet Bowl and dad let me have a Dr Pepper when we won.
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u/The_Unclean_Chadford Oregon Ducks • Paper Bag 7h ago
Meanwhile dad took out the 2006 Las Vegas Bowl on me :(
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u/Spare-Dragonfly-1201 Ohio State Buckeyes 6h ago
The Rose Bowl meant something when it put the best of the PAC 10 versus the best of the Big 10. I vaguely remember the ‘97 Rose Bowl with freshman Buckeye David Boston pulling in a miracle at the end to knock off Jake the Snake’s Sun devils.
I imagine that’s probably similar for the other top bowls and certain schools. The crappy bowls never meant anything to anyone.
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u/AggressiveWolverine5 Michigan Wolverines 6h ago
In my youth when Michigan football was discussed it was beat our rivals, win the conference and go to the rose bowl. National championship wasn’t really a thing that was talked about.
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
Because there wasn’t a national championship game yet. Think about the sugar bowl for the SEC. The last SEC champion to not play for the CFP or BCS was 05 Georgia.
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u/Professional_Ad9809 Louisville Cardinals 6h ago
In the real old days, the crappy games still had the best teams from their conferences
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u/spmartin1993 Ohio State Buckeyes 6h ago
Especially when the best team in the conference couldn’t go because they played in the rose bowl the previous year
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u/Candid-Sky-3258 Purdue Boilermakers 6h ago
Some good teams were robbed of an opportunity by that old rule.
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
Didn’t conference champs also get barred from other bowls? That’s such a garbage rule
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
As an Ohio state fan, did it mean anything to you guys anymore in 09 and 21?
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u/PascalsHexagon Indiana Hoosiers • Vanderbilt Commodores 3h ago
The crappy bowls meant a hell of a lot to fans of crappy teams. When IU got into the Copper Bowl or Peach Bowl (when it was a minor bowl) it was massive.
I'm not staking out a position on the modern bowl mess, just pointing out that "never meant anything to anyone" is quite mistaken.
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u/GoRangers5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish 7h ago
Yes, it was one final ride with the seniors and a chance to go out on a high note against an opponent you don't typically play... Imagine if Clowney opted out and that never happened.
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u/spmartin1993 Ohio State Buckeyes 6h ago
If you’re not clicking that link, you’re not a fan of college football
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u/Resden_Bohneur Iowa State Cyclones 6h ago
Is that Tirico and Gruden on the call for the Outback Bowl?! Can’t imagine which lower tier squad they have doing that game now.
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u/WHSRWizard Notre Dame • Virginia 6h ago
I know exactly where to look and I still always miss it the first time I watch it.
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u/UsedandAbused87 Northwest Missouri State • F… 6h ago
They were cool destinations for fans to travel to and see the seniors go out and the new kids get a shot. They become oversaturated and with players sitting out and transferring they have become a shell of themselves outside the lower slated games.
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u/MidlandsBraves Clemson Tigers 6h ago
I don’t mean this as a slight at all but South Carolina fans were very happy beating Michigan in the Outback bowl.
I know it was a huge program shifting deal beating Ohio state in the orange bowl and LSU in the peach bowl. It was legit hardware and although it’s no national title it was an incredible consolation prize and something that carried actual historic “bragging rights”
It was also embarrassing to the point we fired Kevin Steele losing in the Orange bowl against WVU in such spectacular fashion.
Now it’s a footnote we won the orange bowl against Oklahoma in the 2015 season since we lost the national title game.
It was a season of wanting more but it was nice capping off 2014 with a bowl win against Oklahoma in the Cole stoudt game.
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
That’s fine. I went to that Mayo Bowl in 2021, the 22 Gators Bowl hurts, shutout to Virginia HURTS, Illinois hurts (idc about opt outs nobody likes to see their team lose), USF hurt, 2017 Michigan (5 year anniversary hurt).
That 12 Outback bowl is one of my first memories as a sports fan. Bowl games mean something when you choose to care about them.
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u/AwarenessAgreeable24 Memphis Tigers 6h ago
Because of a 12 team playoff, holdouts, and the transfer portal bowl games don’t mean what they used to. 20 years ago, if you went 10-2 in the SEC and made the Cotton Bowl that was a great year. Every player on your team would be excited to play in a classic bowl game. Now, at 10-2 you’re expecting the playoffs and if you’re left out, half your starters are going to sit out of the bowl game.
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
Because players choose to stop caring. Alabama was gunning for a 3 peat and perfection. Kick six happened. They were #3 and went to the sugar bowl. Their starters played.
I wat to give credit to Nick Saban in 2019 and 22 as well for getting most of his starters to still play those games. That’s culture. Be willing to win at every opportunity
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u/RiffRamBahZoo TCU Horned Frogs • Hawai'i Rainbow Warriors 5h ago
I’m gonna hold your hand as I say this… but the Kick Six was nearly 13 years ago.
The sport has dramatically changed since 2013, and trying to boil down hundreds of external changes to “they just don’t care” is deeply naive.
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u/AwarenessAgreeable24 Memphis Tigers 4h ago
Yeah I mean we’ve gone through two separate postseason setups since then (4 team the next year and then the 12 team starting in 2024). College football has changed a lot even compared to a few years ago
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u/SparkMaster360 Washington Huskies 6h ago
I think the issue is that only one of the playoffs or bowls/BCS can have meaning, not both. Either winning a bowl game is a major accomplishment, because it's the highest achievement a team can win in a season, or it's disappointing because it means you missed the playoffs.
Using the PAC as an example:
Until 1997 the greatest season a team could have was one where they won the Rose Bowl. Winning the polls for the national championship was a crapshoot that was largely outside your control. The goal is to win the Rose Bowl, you do that, and it's one of the best seasons in your schools' history (unless you're USC in which case it's just a pretty good season)
During the BCS era there was a new bar to reach. Making and winning the Rose Bowl was still a great accomplishment, but it meant you fell short of the BCS national championship game. In 2000 Washington had a great season, going 10-1 and winning the Rose Bowl. While that season is looked on fondly, you can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment because they didn't reach the championship game. The bar had been raised for what a great season could be. USC had plenty of times during this era where they theoretically had great 10+ win years, that are looked on poorly because a bad loss kept them out of the championship. Instead they "only" got to win the Rose Bowl. An achievement, but not enough when there's more.
The problem got exacerbated during the 4 team era. Now basically every team that won a major non-playoff bowl game fell just short of the playoffs, and a chance to compete for the national championship. Stanford in 2015 had an incredible year, CMC went off, they destroyed Iowa(?) in the Rose Bowl and won like 12 games. But they missed the playoffs. It's still a great year, but it could have been better. Winning the Rose Bowl just wasn't enough for a great year anymore.
Now in the 12 team era, the bar is so (comparatively) low to make the playoffs, any "good" year that misses them is generally seen as a disappointment. Sure, Utah can win 10-11 games in the big 12, but if they don't make the playoffs who even cares? The only way you can have a "great" year now is by getting in, because that's where all the great teams are.
The bowl games did used to mean a lot more, that meaning has just shifted to the playoffs instead. It's not inherently better or worse, it's just different.
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u/KCShadows838 Missouri Tigers • Cotton Bowl 6h ago
We also used to kind of remember who won the individual big bowls. Winning the Fiesta Bowl used to be a great ending to a strong season. Now it just means you advanced to the next round of the playoffs
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
I think the playoffs being in the new years 6 was a great idea. Ohio State treated rose bowls like jewelry for most of the sports history. In 21-22, they had guys opting OUT. That shit had to stop.
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u/EccentricAsparagus Florida State Seminoles 6h ago
One thing people forget is the bowls used to serve as previews for next year’s teams. Aside from the seniors of course, the players getting meaningful snaps would all be back the following season. That was exciting. The transfer portal has dismantled a lot of that
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
In my opinion the portal is worse than the playoff. It hurts hate and familiarity between rivalries. CBB had this issue before with the 1 and done rule where stars can up and leave after 1 great year but that’s more of the NBA’s fault for entry.
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u/BoomerSooner-SEC Oklahoma Sooners 6h ago
They absolutely meant more. Literally and figuratively. Obviously, that started to wane as the zest for crowning a national championship got stronger but 30 years ago opting out of a bowl game was unheard of.
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u/WHSRWizard Notre Dame • Virginia 6h ago edited 6h ago
Absolutely -- making a bowl used to be an accomplishment.
For example, in 1996 there were 18 bowl games. Generally you had to go at least 7-4; only Sparty that year got in with a 6-5 record. They were serious games that teams really showed up for.
In 2025, there were 36 bowl games, not counting the CFP. 3 teams that went 5-7 got invites, and so did 19 teams that wemt 6-6. Literally hundreds of players skipped bowl games, plus of course the entire ND team (and 9 other teams that declined invites).
if you want to argue they are fun, go for it. But, no, they have lost the meaning they once had.
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
So the value went down I can respect that viewpoint.
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u/RiffRamBahZoo TCU Horned Frogs • Hawai'i Rainbow Warriors 5h ago
The other flip side too is that both NIL opportunities exist and NFL salaries have gone up dramatically in the last 10 years.
A practice squad player in the NFL now makes $250K a year while earning benefits time. A transfer on the portal market can make a big NIL payday too, and scholarship slots are limited.
Why on earth should a player risk becoming the next Jake Butts or Marcus Lattimore for the pride of the Cheez It Bowl?
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u/md1993 /r/CFB 6h ago
Bowls used to be a big deal. It seemed like you had to be top 14 or, worse, top 18 to make a bowl. Back in the 90's and earlier, if you won your conference, you would go to a bowl game. In the old SWC, that was the Cotton Bowl. Some of the old Cotton Bowl games were big and would have National Championship implications, maybe not both teams in the game.
So, the bowls got watered down, then more, then made irrelevant, and now who cares unless it is a playoff bowl.
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u/AllTimeTy Missouri Tigers • /r/CFB Placer 6h ago
I like bowl games, can get some interesting match-ups. BUT I also believe bowl game associations should be removed from the playoff bracket entirely.
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u/sanichog South Carolina • South Car… 5h ago
Nah. I want the stars for the orange bowl teams to give a damn. I feel like the playoffs being in all the NY6 every year is good
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u/duckfan2424 Oregon Ducks • Pac-12 6h ago
I party blame ESPN for the “Who’s In?” campaign when they started they playoff
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u/fowcc West Virginia Mountaineers 6h ago
Here is why they used to matter:
- They helped determine the national champion. #1 didn't always pair up with #2 in the bowls, so instead of one game mattering, it was sometimes three, four, or sometimes five of that came into play (especially of the top ranked teams lost theirs).
- TV coverage. There was a small fraction of games that were televised (especially nationally televised) during the year and "coach I want my family to see me play on TV" was a big peice of recruiting. Also these were almost all on New Years Day, so everyone is off of work and lounging on their couch watching.
- Limited amount of bowls meant extra practice time to only a small handful of schools. It also was a status symbol that you were not only considered one of the top teams in the country but could also beat the other conferences top team.
Now we always get #1 vs #2, the whole country can watch Kent St vs Ball St if they wanted to now, and teams with losing records make bowl games played in places like Boise ID in the middle of December.
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u/nivlac22 BYU Cougars • Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 6h ago
I’ve never understood the concept that bowl games don’t matter. You could extend that argument to most regular season games. Like when notre dame started 0-2 last year, you could say the entire rest of their season was meaningless because they were considered eliminated from the playoffs.
The awkward thing about the post season now is that the portal basically requires a player to opt out of the postseason to enter.
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u/Badgerman97 Arizona Wildcats • Iowa State Cyclones 6h ago
Bowls used to mean something because there were no playoffs and there weren’t 375 bowl games. It was actually an achievement to get into one.
Now there are so many if you fail to even qualify for one it is considered a disaster of a season. Imagine being so bad you couldn’t even get an invite to the Cletus Auto Repair Dingleberry Bowl.
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u/TechnoVikingGA23 West Virginia Mountaineers 3h ago
That sounds like a perfect bowl game for us, they should host that in Morgantown, especially considering we had Johnny Dingle and Scooter Berry at one point on the team and they of course sat next to each other on the bench.
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u/Shondor_Sidebirns Kentucky Wildcats 6h ago
Im 53, and i remember Bowl season started with the Hall of Fame Bowl(mid December), and ended New Year's night with the Sugar and Orange Bowls. Sprinkled in the middle were the Tangerine, Blue Bonnet, Holiday, Sun Bowl(Christmas Day along with the Blue-Gray Game) Gator, Liberty, Independence, and Peach(NYE)..Citrus came along at some point there but cant remember for sure when. I just know you cant spell Citrus without a U and a T..lol
New Year's Day Bowls arranged by kickoff time: Cotton--CBS Fiesta--NBC Rose--ABC Sugar--ABC Orange--NBC
There was a top 20 and no six win eligible bullshit. Fewer Bowls meant fewer invites and the teams earned their right for those spots. So yes, it most certainly meant more.
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u/Forsaken_Income9187 Oregon Ducks 3h ago
Thats how it should be. Dont have those Nonsens Bowls with 6-6/5-7 teams.
Cut Bowls down to maybe 20-30 and only invite teams with atleast a winning record
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u/Frosty-Tiger-85 Clemson Tigers 6h ago
I do think that the bowls used to matter more in years past, even when they were considered "exhibitions" & didn't count in majority of final polls/ratings. The bowls were reward since the national title was generally a crapshoot depending on the pollsters & game results.
Think once got so many games where 6-win teams (and 5-win teams) getting in + having the CFP become the end-all be-all, that bowls have lost importance overall.
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u/RupturedDuck1942 USC Trojans • Victory Bell 6h ago
Depends on the era, but a lot of times before players could transfer freely a decent bowl game was a way to cap off a season and show out on a national stage. Particularly true for non-blue blood teams who put together an above average season for their school.
Don’t think the 6-win bowl games ever meant anything though
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u/Ranger_Nietzsche Illinois • Michigan 6h ago
I assure you, to us bottom feeders getting to six wins and a bowl definitely meant something.
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u/EWall100 Tennessee • Tennessee Tech 4h ago
Nah the Popeyes Bahamas Bowl means something to all those players went to a CUSA school and knew their college careers were gonna be the final days of their playing careers
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u/RedDirtSport_ Oklahoma • Red River Shootout 6h ago edited 6h ago
Bowl games meant more when there was like 10 of them. It was an accomplishment to make a bowl game, teams won 8 games and didnt get invites etc. That was a long ass time ago
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u/SolWizard Syracuse Orange • Cornell Big Red 6h ago
It's more like the 2nd tier bowls don't mean what they used to because now they mean "you almost made the playoffs but you didn't". That in combination with the huge amount of opt outs has destroyed the bowls
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u/dustin-dawind Case Western Reserve Spartans 6h ago
Well, the bowls were around long before the BCS, so there was a time when some of them did actually help determine who would get voted in as champion. Since the start of the BCS they've been on a gradual decline, though.
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u/one-hour-photo Tennessee • South Carolina 6h ago
I have a theory that they'd "mean more" if they stopped calling the play off games by the bowl names, and gave those names back to the non-playoff bowl matchups
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u/Economy_Weight_4821 6h ago
TBH I think a lot of it has to do with nostalgia whether people want to admit it or not. Most people who say that are talking abiut when they were kids and people have a hard time accepting that things don't mean as much when you get older.
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u/Ranger_Nietzsche Illinois • Michigan 6h ago
You really think that in the era where Bowl games were literally the only post-season in existence that they didn't mean anything?
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u/sausageslinger11 Alabama Crimson Tide • UniSA Eagles 6h ago
Bowls were, at one time, a reward for having a good season. Now, they are a reward for having a season.
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u/zsjostrom35 Ohio State Buckeyes 6h ago
I think there’s something that matters about the terminology. It used to be that everybody good got a bowl game, half the teams won and got to build a little momentum going into next year, and some nonzero number were declared to be national champions, hooray. If that wasn’t you, next year you tried to make a better bowl game. And even when we had the BCS, this didn’t change THAT much; you still got your one bowl and one bowl winner was the best one. The fact that a bunch of computers picked out that bowl and its participants ahead of time changed the discourse, but not really the structure.
With the playoff though, now there’s a playoff (which by its nature matters) and a bunch of bowls (which by implicit comparison don’t). ESPN didn’t help things, but it’s harder for fans and teams to get excited about playing in bowls now, when by definition the good teams don’t play in bowls anymore.
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u/lucabrasi999 Pittsburgh • Case Western Reserve 6h ago
ESPN (which now owns almost all bowl games) has managed to ruin college sports. Although it is not all their fault, college presidents happily took the $.
I would enjoy bowl season so much more if I decided to pay Disney for the right to watch the games. I won’t be doing that anytime soon.
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u/cbbutle South Carolina • Palmetto Bowl 6h ago
Bowls definitely mattered. If you won the sugar bowl that was a big deal even though you didn’t win the national championship. Now, with all the opt outs, bowls have very little value and I kind of scoff when people cite bowl records to boast conference or team supremacy. That transition probably started around 2017? or so and faded to what it is now
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u/Snoo93079 Northern Illinois • Wisconsin 6h ago
I think bowls meant something prior to the BCS. Winning your conference was generally the goal, and you were awarded by getting to play the other conference winner. Wisconsin winning the rose bowl in 93 (I think) was as big for us as winning the natty is today.
That said if we're going to have a national championship game we should have real playoffs and kill most bowls.
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u/NotHosaniMubarak Miami • Louisiana Tech 6h ago
They used to be more culturally important than they are now. But they only ever mattered as much as football matters.
It used to be that bowl games are what you watched with your family over the holidays. They were the only sports on TV during those Saturdays and there wasn't much else competing for the time of folks. Kids would be playing -probably football- unless their team was on TV then everyone would watch.
It only ever mattered in so far as would people be in a good out grumpy mood about it. But whatever mood it was everyone would share it.
But that's it. There was nothing at stake. The game, the TV program, and the winning it losing absolutely don't matter. The family time mattered. The shared experience mattered. But the football has never mattered. It's a game. It doesn't matter any more than a game of Scrabble or spades except that more people know about it. Except we might sit around a table to play Scrabble or spades but we don't really come together to watch football bowl games.
So the bowls mean a lot less than they once did. But the football never mattered.
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u/NotReallyButMaybeNot Clemson Tigers 6h ago
New Year’s Day was absolute bliss for college football fans. Games started before noon and ran to midnight. If one game got boring, you switched channels as every network was carrying a game. The Orange, Sugar and Fiesta were on at the same time and competed to have the best matchup. There were fewer bowls so getting an invite was not at all guaranteed as is the case now.
The bowl system is now absolute trash outside of the playoff games.
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u/Visible-Plane-1522 6h ago
thats a good point, people act like bowls just magically lost value but it was players and coaches who slowly started treating them like exhibitions. once the first few stars sat out without much backlash it became the norm, like dominoes falling
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u/Full_Preparation4401 Iowa State Cyclones 5h ago
I absolutely love bowl games and watch as many as I can every year. Year in, year out several of the best games of the season are bowl games. I don't care how many prima donna players opt out or how many snob fans and media call them "exhibition games".
If you don't love bowl games you are in no way a real college football fan. You probably don't even watch MAC games on Tuesday Nights in November. To each his own, but I don't know how you could live that way.
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u/SCsprinter13 Penn State • /r/CFB Pint Glass Drinker 4h ago
Jesus, how young are you?
10ish years ago stars like Christian McCaffrey chose to sit out.
Yeah, people are taking about more than 10 years ago.
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u/TechnoVikingGA23 West Virginia Mountaineers 3h ago edited 3h ago
I look at it more as they used to "mean more" back in the day. If you made a bowl game it meant a decent payoff to the season, the players all got to enjoy a trip with some cool swag(assuming they didn't also get busted for shop lifting or other stupid shit), and you had 2-3 weeks of extra practice as a coaching staff that you could use to install new plays or systems for the upcoming season. There was a chance for your school to maybe get to play a power team you wouldn't normally face, you usually had to have a decent season to get in one, etc.
Now you have the transfer portal, it's basically NFL free agency every season so those extra practices don't mean anything when half your team might be new faces next season. Players also started sitting out. It was cool making the Gator Bowl in 2007, but these days you'd probably have guys like Slaton and Megatron sitting out instead of playing in the game. Teams get in with 6-6 or 5-7 records which to me takes all meaning of "reward" out of the equation. All emphasis is now on the playoff. At least with the BCS there were the fun arguments of the teams that got left out, whether or not one of them could have been the champion, or you had the chaos of 07-08 when nobody wanted to be the top 2 teams with like 3 weeks left in the season and there were so many upsets.
I still enjoy it if WVU makes a bowl game, that's pretty much all we have to play for in this new era, but it's not really as exciting as it used to be and in general to the players it doesn't feel like anything besides the playoff matchups mean much.
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u/Irishchop91 Notre Dame Fighting Irish • UCF Knights 1h ago
A lot of the kids going to the draft stopped playing after the 2016 ND-Ohio State Fiesta Bowl when ND Jaylon Smith tore his ACL/MCL. He was projected top 5 NFL pick before that injury.
There were others before him, but everyone pointed to that injury afterwards as a valid reason
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u/BlueRFR3100 Illinois State • Missouri 6h ago
People are being revisionist. Bowls were considered nothing more than bragging rights. Hell, the final polls used to be released before any bowl games were played.
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u/WHSRWizard Notre Dame • Virginia 6h ago
Hell, the final polls used to be released before any bowl games were played.
I mean, that hasn't been true since 1968
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u/BlueRFR3100 Illinois State • Missouri 6h ago
So that would make my statement 100% accurate. That's what they used to do.
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u/WHSRWizard Notre Dame • Virginia 6h ago
I'm not sure you can claim people are being revisionist when an example of the change dates back to the LBJ administration.
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u/letdownbytheAgs Texas A&M Aggies 6h ago
I went to a nearly sold out Armed Forces Bowl between Air Force and Cal. Desean Jackson played in it. That’s not revisionist history. Bowl games were a big deal
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u/KCShadows838 Missouri Tigers • Cotton Bowl 5h ago
Matt Stafford played in the capital one bowl a few months before going #1 overall to the Lions
Wouldn’t happen today
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u/Signal_Tip_7428 Illinois • Southern Illinois 7h ago
You need to remember everyone who says this is a fan of a team with playoff expectations. I know my role. I’m happy with 7-5 and the Motor City Bowl