between
St. Mary's and
Texas Tech John F. Kennedy (lower left of center) at the
1963 Orange Bowl in
Miami The history of the bowl game began with the
1902 Tournament East-West football game, sponsored by the
Tournament of Roses Association between
Michigan and
Stanford, a game which Michigan won 49–0. The Tournament of Roses eventually sponsored an annual contest starting with the
1916 Tournament East-West Football Game. With the
1923 Rose Bowl it began to be played at the newly completed
Rose Bowl stadium, and thus the contest itself became known as the
Rose Bowl Game. The word "bowl" to describe the games originates from the
Yale Bowl stadium, which was the basis of the design of the Rose Bowl Stadium. While modern travel is more convenient, all but 5 of 41 bowl games () are still located in
cities below approximately 36° N. Currently, college football bowl games are played from mid-December to early January. As the number of bowl games has increased, the number of games a team would need to win to be invited to a bowl game has decreased. With a 12-game schedule, a number of teams with only 5 wins have been invited to a bowl game. , the
University of Alabama has played in more bowl games than any other school, with 69 appearances (counting
College Football Playoff semifinals and finals). Alabama also holds the record for most bowl victories with 41.
Florida State held the record of consecutive bowl berths at 36 bowl appearances from 1982 to 2017. However, it is not recognized by the NCAA since the NCAA vacated FSU's
2006 Emerald Bowl victory over UCLA due to an academic issue. The Rose Bowl was the only major college bowl game in 1930. By 1940, there were five major college bowl games: the Rose Bowl, the
Sugar Bowl (established in 1935), the
Cotton Bowl Classic (1937), the
Orange Bowl (1935), and the
Sun Bowl (1935). By 1950, the number had increased to eight games. This slate of eight bowl games persisted through 1960, but by 1970 the number had increased again, to 11 games. The number continued to increase, to 15 games in 1980, to 19 games in 1990, 25 games in 2000, 35 games in 2010, and 41 games by 2015 (40 games plus two teams playing a second game to determine the
National Champion). Up until around the 1950s, the small number of games were played solely on
New Year's Day, with the only major exception being if the holiday occurred on a Sunday. The tradition of not playing bowl games on Sunday initially started from the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl not being held on Sundays for fear of spooking horses tied at churches, but in later years was done to avoid conflict with NFL games. For the
2016–17 bowl season, the 41 games require a little over three weeks, starting December 17 and ending on January 9. While bowl games were originally exclusive to warm cities thought of as winter vacation destinations, indoor stadiums allow games to be played in colder climates. The attendance of 106,869 for the
1973 Rose Bowl set the
Rose Bowl Stadium record, and an NCAA bowl game attendance record. The Rose Bowl stadium still is the largest capacity stadium and the Rose Bowl game has the highest attendance for postseason bowl games. In the 1990s, many bowl games began to modify or abandon their traditional names in favor of selling
naming rights. While some include the traditional name in some form (e.g. the
Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual), others have eliminated their traditional name in favor of solely using their corporate sponsor's name (e.g. the former
Citrus Bowl became the
Capital One Bowl for some time after the financial services company
Capital One bought the naming rights; it later reverted to its original name in 2015). Prior to 1992, most bowls had strict agreements with certain conferences. For example, the Rose Bowl traditionally invited the champions of the
Pac-10 and the
Big Ten conferences. The Sugar Bowl invited the SEC champion and the Orange Bowl hosted the
Big 8 conference champion. These conference tie-ins led to situations where the top-ranked teams in the country could not play each other in a bowl game. The national championship was decided after the bowls, solely by voters for various media polls, who tried to decide which team was best, sometimes based on wins against far inferior teams. As a result, there could be multiple championship titles and no single champion. This led to the term "Mythical National Championship", which is still used to describe high school national champions, since high school sports have state championship tournaments but not national.
Attempts to determine a national champion between
Texas and
USC at the
Rose Bowl in
Pasadena, California between
Alabama and
Texas Because of the vested economic interests entrenched in the various bowl games, the longer regular season compared to lower divisions of college football, and a desire not to have college players play several rounds of playoff games during final exams and winter recess, the
Division I Bowl Subdivision long avoided instituting a playoff tournament to determine an annual national champion. Instead, the National Champion in the Football Bowl Subdivision has traditionally been determined by a vote of sports writers and other non-players. In 1995, the
Bowl Alliance, formed by the major bowls and conferences, put in place a system where the two highest ranked teams would play each other, even if they were each affiliated with a different bowl. However, the Pac-10 and Big Ten and the Rose Bowl did not participate. Number 1 vs Number 2 bowl match-ups became far more likely, but were not guaranteed. After the 1997 season, undefeated
Michigan was ranked first in both major polls, but as the Big Ten champion, they played eighth-ranked Pac-10 champion
Washington State in the Rose Bowl. The top Bowl Alliance team, #2 and unbeaten
Nebraska, faced one-loss, third-ranked
Tennessee in the Orange Bowl. Michigan won by five on New Year's Day and the next night, Nebraska beat Tennessee (playing with an injury-hobbled
Peyton Manning) by 25. The AP kept Michigan as the champion, but the Coaches' Poll jumped Nebraska, playing its final game for retiring coach
Tom Osborne, in part because of their more lopsided victory against a more highly ranked opponent. The following season, the Rose Bowl, Pac-10, and Big Ten joined the other bowls and major conferences to form the
Bowl Championship Series. The BCS attempted to match the two highest ranked teams in the country based upon calculations from various sources, including statistics and coaches' polls, with one of the four bowl games in the consortium, the
Rose Bowl,
Fiesta Bowl,
Sugar Bowl, and
Orange Bowl, rotating the role of "national championship." In 2006, a dedicated
BCS Championship Game rotated among the BCS venues. The BCS Championship Game, while separate from the four main bowls, was still rotated among their sites. The
Coaches Poll was contractually obligated to recognize the winner of the game as its national champion. However, other polls such as the
AP Poll may deviate and pick a different team, particularly in years when multiple teams were equally worthy of reaching the game. In 2003, for instance, one-loss
LSU won the BCS National Championship over
Oklahoma, but the AP crowned one-loss
USC champion after its Rose Bowl win. For the 2014–15 season, the BCS was replaced by a new consortium, the
College Football Playoff (CFP). The new system used a four-team
single-elimination tournament, with its participants selected and seeded by a committee; the semi-final games were rotated between pairs of the six member bowls yearly, branded as the "
New Year's Six": the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl, then Orange Bowl and
Cotton Bowl Classic, and then the Fiesta Bowl and
Peach Bowl. The winners from the two semi-final bowls advanced to the
College Football Playoff National Championship, played at a neutral site determined using bids. Members of the New Year's Six that were not hosting semi-final games reverted to their traditional tie-ins. The CFP then expanded to a 12-team format for the 2024–25 season, with members of the New Year's Six now either hosting the quarter-finals and semi-finals on a rotating basis. Like its predecessors, and in contrast to the officially sanctioned NCAA tournaments at lower levels, the College Football Playoff is not officially recognized as an NCAA championship. ==Professional bowl games==