Bowl game

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In the United States, a bowl game is traditionally a post-season college football game; however the term "bowl" has become synonymous with a major American football event and variations of the traditional post-season match-up between two successful college teams do exist.

The term "bowl" originated from the Rose Bowl Stadium, site of the first post-season college football games. The Rose Bowl stadium takes its name and bowl-shaped design from the Yale Bowl, the prototype of many football stadiums in the United States. 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 with the 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 of Roses 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. Other cities saw the promotional value for tourism that the Tournament of Roses parade and Rose Bowl carried and began to develop their own regional festivals which included college football games. The label "bowl" was attached to the festival name, even though the games were not always played in bowl-shaped stadiums.

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 a 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 Rose Bowl was the only major college bowl game in 1930. By 1940, there were five 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 eight games. In 1960 there were still eight 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, 25 games in the year 2000 and ultimately, 32 games in 2006. Up until around the 1950s, games were played solely on New Years Day, with few exceptions. In the late 1950s, more bowl games began playing their games earlier in December. Also bowl games began to be set in cities which were not thought of as winter vacation destinations due to their colder climates.

Currently, college football bowl games 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. With a twelve game schedule, a team may have six wins and be invited to a bowl game. As of 2007, the University of Alabama has played in and won more bowl games than any other school, with 55 appearances and 31 victories.

[edit] Professional bowl games

The National Football League also used the name "bowl" for some of its playoff games. While the NFL Championship was not named a Bowl initially, the league instituted the Pro Bowl as the name of its all-star game in 1951, and introduced the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl as a matchup of the two second-place teams in each division from 1960 to 1969.

When the professional football AFL-NFL merger occurred in 1970, the AFL-NFL World Championship Game became the NFL's championship and is now known as the Super Bowl, as it has been named since 1968. There has also been the American Bowl, a preseason match held overseas, and various one-time games informally nicknamed "bowls," such as the Bounty Bowl, Ice Bowl, Snow Bowl, Freezer Bowl, Fog Bowl and the proposed China Bowl.

As a result, other professional football leagues used or use the name "Bowl" for their championships, such as the World Football League, NFL Europa (both used the name "World Bowl") and the Arena Football League ("ArenaBowl").

[edit] Bowl games today

[edit] Post-season bowls

See also: Automatic bids to non-BCS bowls

At the NCAA top level of football, the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (known as Division I-A from 1978 through 2005), teams must earn the right to be bowl eligible by winning at least six games and by not having a losing record 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, six-win teams without an automatic bowl tie-in cannot be picked above an available seven-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; they also provide many teams a chance to end the season on a winning note; in addition bowl games sometimes offer huge sums of money to the teams involved; these facts make even minor bowl games popular among teams. For the 2007 season, 64 of the 119 Division I FBS teams will play in a bowl game. At lower levels, the only bowl game is typically 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] Small-College Bowls

Aside from the BCS System and the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision, there are a few bowl games for smaller colleges. One such example is the Victory Bowl sponsored by the NCCAA, a group that does not restrict its membership to either NCAA or NAIA.

Also sanctioned by the NAIA is the Wheat Bowl--a pre-season bowl game. For this particular game, the organization has found scheduling a smaller stadium more viable at the beginning of the season than at the end of the season.[3]

[edit] Special games and rivalries

Bowl games that are not part of the post-season are traditional games against rival schools such as Iron Bowl and Egg Bowl and the Friends of Coal Bowl pitting Marshall University against West Virginia University . 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 National Football League. 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. The Super Bowl, the NFL's championship game, started as a "world championship" between the champions of the rival American Football League and NFL in the same way many college bowl games bring together the champions of different college conferences.

There have also been pre-season games carrying the "bowl" title, including the Mirage Bowl and Glasnost Bowl.

The phrase Toilet Bowl is sometimes used jocularly to refer to a game that is particularly poor in play quality.

[edit] All-star bowl games

Following the Bowl Championship Series, a series of all-star bowl games round out the post-season schedule. These games showcase the best players from a particular region, just as the NFL showcases its all-stars in the annual post-season Pro Bowl. Such college all-star games include the East-West Shrine Game, the Hula Bowl, the Senior Bowl, and the newly-established Texas vs. The Nation Game.

For the 2006 (with bowl games taking place in 2007) season, the BCS added a fifth bowl that would decide the national championship. In the first game, called, descriptively, the BCS National Championship Game, and played in Glendale, Arizona, the Florida Gators defeated the Ohio State Buckeyes, 41-14.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Frank Deford, The earmarks of athletics: Sheer lunacy of bowl games defies all traditional logic, SportsIllustrated.com, November 29, 2006.
  2. ^ Stewart Mandel, Bowl Projections: ACC, Big 12 title games will cause big domino effect, SportsIllustrated.com, November 27, 2006.
  3. ^ Wheat Bowl - Great Bend - Kansas - Football

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Division I FBS college football bowl games
Other games
All-Star Games: East-West Shrine Game • Hula Bowl • Senior Bowl • Texas vs. The Nation Game
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