Bowl game
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A bowl game is traditionally a post-season college football game; however the term "bowl" has become synonymous with a major football event and variations of the traditional post-season match-up between two successful college teams do exist. In college football parlance, the term "bowl" can also be used as a verb: as in a successful team going "bowling".
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[edit] History
The history of the bowl game begins in 1902, with a 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, which began to be played at the Rose Bowl when that stadium was completed, and thus the contest itself became known as the Rose Bowl. The historic timing of bowl games, around the new year, is the result of two factors: originally bowls began in warm climates such as Southern California, Florida and Texas as way to promote the area for tourism and business. Since commercial air travel was either non-existent or very limited early on, the games were timed a substantial amount of time after the end of the regular season to allow fans to travel to the game site.[1]
The number of bowl games each year has increased since the 1930's. The Rose Bowl was the only major college bowl game in 1930. By 1940, there were 5 major college bowl games: the Rose Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and the Sun Bowl. By 1950, the number had increased to 8 games. In 1960 there were still 8 major college bowl games, 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, and to 25 games in the year 2000. Up until around the 1950's, games were played solely on New Years Day, with few exceptions. In the late 1950's, more bowl games began playing their games earlier in December. Currently, they are played from mid-December to mid-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.
[edit] Bowl games today
[edit] Post-season bowls
- See also: Automatic bids to non-BCS bowls
At the NCAA top level of football, Division I-A, teams must earn the right to be bowl eligible by winning at least 6 games during the season. They are then invited to a bowl game based on their placement and the tie-ins that the conference has to each bowl game. As per NCAA rules, 6-win teams without an automatic bowl tie-in cannot be picked above an available 7-win team[2]. Bowls are popular among coaching staffs because the NCAA allows college teams going to bowl games extra weeks of practice they would otherwise not have; this fact makes even minor bowl games popular among teams. For the 2006 season, 64 of the 119 Division I-A teams will play in a bowl game. At lower levels, bowl games are typically only the national championship game.
Also, unlike the current BCS system, the majority of bowls kept strict agreements with certain conferences to invite teams from those conferences. For example, the Rose Bowl traditionally invites the champion of the Pac-10 and the Big Ten conferences. These conference tie-ins often led to situations where the top-ranked teams in the country could not play each other in a bowl game. The BCS attempts to match up the top two ranked teams in the country to determine a single national championship; in effect this creates a two-team playoff for the championship.
[edit] Other bowls
Bowl games that are not part of the post-season are traditional games against rival schools such as Iron Bowl and Egg Bowl . Recently, the term "bowl" has been added to other games that have some special note or sub-plot to the actual game, especially in the NFL. Examples of this are the Bowden Bowl, Manning Bowl and Ice Bowl. However, any game that is part of the post season is considered a bowl game, even if it isn't a formal bowl game, such as all-star games.
There have also been pre-season games carrying the "bowl" title, including the Mirage Bowl and Glasnost Bowl.
[edit] See also
- List of college bowl games
- NCAA football bowl games, 2006-07
- NCAA football bowl games, 2005-06
- NCAA football bowl games, 2004-05
- Bowl Coalition
- Bowl Alliance
- Bowl Championship Series
- NCAA football bowl records
[edit] References
- College Bowl Games. HickokSports.com. Retrieved on September 20, 2005.
- ^ Frank Deford, The earmarks of athletics: Sheer lunacy of bowl games defies all traditional logic, SportsIllustrated.com, November 29, 2006.
- ^ Stewart Mandel, Bowl Projections: ACC, Big 12 title games will cause big domino effect, SportsIllustrated.com, November 27, 2006.
