Why Are There So Many Bowl Games? (These Numbers May Surprise You)
By David Glenn
Why are there so many bowl games?
That simple question has been the basis for one of the most frequent complaints of college sports fans for decades.
Somehow, though, it’s rarely discussed why there are so many bowl games, and you may be surprised by the answer.
There’s no doubt that college football’s postseason has grown dramatically, from nine bowl games in 1950 to 11 in 1975 to 25 in 2000 and now 40-plus in the ongoing 2025 season. That means more than 80 teams, out of the 136 playing at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level, are needed to populate all the bowl slots.
Under NCAA rules, automatic bowl eligibility requires six or more victories and at least a .500 winning percentage. This year, however, so many teams with records of 6-6 or better declined bowl invitations that a handful of 5-7 squads are participating in the postseason.
Appalachian State (5-7) thought its season was over, then received and accepted an invitation to the Birmingham Bowl to face archrival Georgia Southern (6-6) on Dec. 29. The opponent for 8-4 Wake Forest at the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte on Jan. 2 is 5-7 Mississippi State.
Those sorts of ugly records — cue the “rewarding mediocrity” and “everyone gets a trophy” crowds — tend to be the foundation of complaints from the “too-many-bowls” crew.
At the highest level, of course, there’s no mystery.
Duke players celebrate with the trophy after defeating No. 17 Virginia in the 2025 ACC Football Championship on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025 in Charlotte, N.C. (Photo via AP Photo/Jacob Kupferman.)
More than a decade ago, a major sports broadcaster (ESPN) saw massive value in the possibility of creating the first FBS playoff in the history of college football, which dates to 1869. The original four-team bracket, which began after the 2014 regular season, brought in $470 million per year from ESPN, and its enormous television audiences justified that massive investment.
Ohio State’s win over Oregon in January 2015 remains by far the most-watched game of the playoff era, with an estimated 34.6 million average viewers. That enormous number immediately made the ESPN broadcast the most-watched program on a cable-TV channel in the history of the United States.
In the entire 2015 calendar year, considering TV programs of all types, only the Super Bowl (115.2 million), the NFL’s AFC championship game (42.3 million) and the Oscars (38.6 million) brought in larger audiences in the United States. Each was broadcast on network television.
For comparison, the most popular “regularly scheduled” programs in 2015 were Sunday Night Football (23.3 million average for the entire NFL regular season), The Big Bang Theory (21.1 million), NCIS (20.9 million), The Walking Dead (19.7 million) and Empire (17.7 million).
“The College Football Playoff is enormously popular,” former CFP executive director Bill Hancock said. “We do surveys every year, because we want to know what the fans are thinking. The (playoff) committee has had a favorable rating close to 90 percent. The playoff itself has been well over 80 percent. People love the College Football Playoff.”
Although there has been a declining CFP viewership trend, including a record-low 17.2 million audience for Georgia’s 65-7 annihilation of TCU in the 2022 national championship game, every other title contest in the 12-year playoff era finished among America’s 50 most-watched television programs (sports or otherwise) in their respective calendar years.
So, what explains the proliferation of lower-profile bowl games?
First, philosophically speaking, it’s hard to understand most of the too-many-bowls hate. Nobody is forced to watch, after all, so there are no true victims here. Moreover, thousands of players get one more road trip with their teammates, friends and families, often to enticing and/or warm-weather locations, plus up to $950 worth of bowl-provided swag ($550 directly from the bowl, $400 via a participating university) and perhaps some lifelong memories as well.
How could all of that possibly be a bad thing?
Practically speaking, the answer to the “why” question regarding the smaller bowls is similar to the explanation for the bigger bowls, just on a reduced scale: major sports broadcasters (mostly ESPN) see value in these games, and the (much smaller but still significant) television audiences they’re getting during the winter holiday season are justifying their (much lower) investments.
Whereas college football’s most prominent postseason games (within the new 12-team CFP, which brings in about $1.3 billion per year in TV money) still attract audiences in the 10-25 million range, a significant number of more typical bowls also average more than 5 million viewers, a large majority average more than 2 million viewers, and all but a few average more than 1 million viewers per game.
The Oregon-UNC matchup in the 2022 Holiday Bowl, for example, attracted an average audience of approximately 4 million viewers. That’s a very impressive, impactful number.
For comparison, in men’s college basketball, the second most popular college sport, even conference championship games almost never reach that 4 million number anymore. NCAA Tournament games almost always attract bigger (typically much bigger) audiences, but during the regular season and conference tournaments, only a small handful of must-see-TV games (e.g., Duke-Carolina in most years) reach or surpass the 4 million threshold.
Among the dozens of other college sports, 4 million is an almost unthinkable number. The only exceptions are in women’s basketball, and — prior to 2023, and the dramatic ratings spikes generated by Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark — only in its NCAA Tournament title game, which has attracted 4 million (or more) viewers nine times in the last 25 seasons.
Because the Disney-owned family of networks (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, etc.) controls the TV/streaming rights to all but three bowl games — a corporate subsidiary, ESPN Events, actually owns and operates 17 of the smaller and mid-level bowls — the company can seek the best matchups, select its preferred day/time slots, mostly avoid head-to-head competition with other bowls, and otherwise maximize its chance of high ratings and, thus, postseason success.
This season, the Disney outlets collectively scheduled two bowls on Dec. 13, one on Dec. 16, two on Dec. 17, one on Dec. 18, three on Dec. 19, three on Dec. 20, one on Dec. 22, three on Dec. 23, one on Dec. 24, three on Dec. 26, seven on Dec. 27 (starting at 11 a.m. and finishing after midnight), one on Dec. 29, three on Dec. 30, four on Dec. 31, three on Jan. 1 (each a CFP quarterfinal game), three on Jan. 2, and of course the CFP semifinals (Jan. 8 and 9) and championship game (Jan. 19).
Clearly, then, there is a method to this postseason gridiron madness, and as long as millions — and sometimes tens of millions — continue to watch, there will continue to be a lot of bowl games, large and small, from mid-December through mid-January every year.
Merry Christmas.
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
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