Football question: Bowl Games

Nope they're not a tournament, they're just the bowl games. There are no points. Mostly fanfare. Some of them can help or hurt you in next year's pre-season standings.

If you have a 6 win season you're eligible to go to a bowl game. There's a buttload more that goes into it, what conference you're in, how many in your conference are in bowls, your standing within your conference, etc.

But just making it to a bowl game is something. There are 35 bowl games, that means 70 teams make it. There are 124 teams.

For BCS bowls (this goes away next year so take it as a this year only) there are five bowl games. Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Rose and Championship.

Next year some of the 35 bowl games will be the play off games for the finals. That should prove amusing for the first couple years.

But boiled down, the bowl games make money. For the colleges, for the town and for the stadium they play in.

Next year there will be a 'Final Four' in NCAA football. So three of the bowls each year will host the 2 playoffs and 1 championship game.

The other bowls will just be selections.

Yeah, I have seen the Rose Bowl Stadium... I understand how it is a money maker

People,in the seats is nice, but the true money is made when ESPN and the sponsor pay to televise the games. You'll see bowl games with barely 5000 fans in the seats played last week by lesser successful teams.

Basically, bowl games now are a party for the alumni to attend and a reward for a good season for the players.

I believe bowl games actually don't make that much money. I've seen reports where schools have to buy up all the unsold tickets and pay for all the travel expenses etc, they end up losing money. Most of the bowl games don't really pay that much and even the big games get their revenue's split among the whole conference.