Just seems to me that the non-playoff bowls have become as meaningless as the N.I.T. basketball tournament. The wild expansion of cash-cow bowls where almost everybody qualifies has been exposed as less meaningful as quality players in mass refuse to play if they remotely think they have an NFL payday possibility. Not criticizing their economic decision (hate it, but appeciate it); but, it certainly brings a whole new degree of sunlight on the meaningless nature of many of these games. I am sure others have opinions on this. Been watching poorly attended games, weather cancelled game, and announcers explaining we are watching shell of teams. Looking forward to full teams tomorrow in championship playoffs.

I think I read somewhere that ESPN actually owns 13 bowl games. To the average fan, I agree many of the games suck and will probably get worse, as you say, but I guess that they attract enough TV viewers to make it financially worthwhile to put the game on.

Some have been very good games and some have been crappy games.

 

However, college football is my favorite sport and I typically watch well over half of the bowl games.

I think ESPN bought many of these just to serve programming needs. I feel they probably do better ratings wise than a random NBA or CBK game.

 

Attendance is often terrible, but that stadium is completely empty if there were no bowl that day.

 

I can’t see them going anywhere. TBH I believe it’s college football fans have entered an alternate reality where only the winners count.

ESPN Events owns...

Texas Bowl

Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl

Bahamas Bowl

Birmingham Bowl

Celebration Bowl

Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl

Potato Bowl

Frisco Bowl

New Mexico Bowl

Hawai’i Bowl

Las Vegas Bowl

Armed Forces Bowl

Camellia Bowl

First Responder Bowl