Why bowl games are in such random places (2024)

From Boca Raton, Fla. to Frisco, Texas to Shreveport, La., there are some college football bowl games in some truly unusual places.

Bowls are thought of as fun-in-the-sun exhibitions at the end of the season. But there’s nothing particularly warm about New York City or Annapolis, Md. in late December. Even El Paso’s Sun Bowl can at times be anything but sunny, as we figured out in 2015 ...

... and who wants to celebrate the holidays in Santa Clara, Calif.?

America’s weirdest sport has such a weirdly located postseason for a few reasons.

You can only have so many bowl games in South Florida, Louisiana, or Southern California.

San Diego’s secondary bowl, the Poinsettia, was just contracted, and the poorly attended Miami Beach Bowl moved to Texas and became the Frisco Bowl.

Location variety was the impetus for one of the oldest bowl games on the college football calendar, the Sun. In 1934, a Kiwanis club created a high school all-star game that would feature college teams. It became a destination for conference champions in the border region and was the first bowl game with a title sponsor. It’s had a national television audience since about the time that the sport was first broadcast on TV and has been on CBS every year since 1968, even as ESPN took over almost the entire rest of the bowl calendar.

Smaller cities like putting their names on the bowl map.

One of the postseason’s newer bowls (Military Bowl) fought the same battle as the Sun. The short answer to why it was created in Annapolis: enough people wanted it there.

As friends Marie Rudolph and Sean Metcalf met at a neighborhood restaurant, they saw television commercials promoting upcoming bowl games across the nation and wondered why the Washington area did not have a game of its own.

Rudolph and Metcalf researched requirements to host a bowl game. They sought opinions from local political, business, and community leaders.

Though the initial response was lukewarm, the former D.C. government employees remained confident. They continued their outreach and used their connections to gain support and build interest. The DC Bowl Committee, Inc., was created in August 2008.

And when big cities add bowls, sometimes even that ends up being strange, but still working fine.

That Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium? It’s been a pretty good slot for teams in the Northeast. Syracuse, Pitt, Penn State, and Rutgers have played in it. It’s much easier for those fans to get to the Bronx than it is to get to Miami Beach.

But some bowls still opt to go even farther from fans, rather than closer.

The Bahamas Bowl is heading into its third year, and it’s become a truly unique experience for players and fans, but it’s far from the first international game.

Sometimes bowls spring out of competitive necessity, like Boise’s Potato Bowl.

Were there any volunteers to come to the aid of the Big West? Boise State athletic director Gene Bleymaier raised his hand. What about creating a unique bowl game at a cold-weather site, one that had embraced football at all levels for decades? The idea germinated with the support of Big West commissioner Dennis Farrell, and on June 12, 1997, the new bowl received official certification from the NCAA.

West Coast teams outside of the Pac-12 finish the season 6-6 or better and need a postseason destination without prohibitive travel costs, too.

Conferences claw for bowl tie-ins, but other times, it works the other way around.

The Independence Bowl in Shreveport has obvious location tie-ins, but at this point, it might be a detriment. While its legacy status as the 11th-oldest bowl will likely keep it in Shreveport as long as possible, it’s been passed over in the pecking order by other bowls. In many years, the game’s marketed SEC-ACC matchup hasn’t come to fruition. Now, the Independence Bowl needs to figure out what it is.

In 1999, the Independence Bowl would get the 6th team from the SEC and the 5th/6th team from the Big XII. This year, the Independence Bowl got the 11th team from a 14-team SEC and one team in the 9th-11th range from a 14-team ACC. The I-Bowl has been leapfrogged in the SEC pecking order by the Gator/TaxSlayer Bowl, Texas Bowl, Liberty Bowl, Belk Bowl, and Birmingham Bowl in the last 17 years.

It may not be sexy, but when the bowl system pecking order can be more fully reorganized in 2020 (after an NCAA moratorium on new bowl games ends), a Group of 5 tie-in could be the negotiating move as a way to survive. That would actually work location-wise for many Conference USA, Sun Belt, and American teams as a cheap reward for a good season.

So even as the bowl slides in prestige, Shreveport can still make sense as a location.

As for where the bowl system will expand to next?

Fans of Big Ten teams and other schools above the Mason-Dixon Line often complain about a lack of local options for their teams. How about Chicago’s Wrigley Field?

It could be Dubai or Ireland or Australia, depending on what happens when the NCAA moratorium lifts. But don’t worry: more traditional sites are in play as well.

There’ll always be a mix of big cities, sunny locales, and towns you might not’ve visited. It’s a big college football landscape that makes the sport great.