Bill Connelly, ESPN Staff WriterDec 13, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
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Fifty years ago, there were 11 bowl games in major college football.

You had your relatively minor affairs -- the Liberty Bowl (No. 10 Maryland vs. Tennessee), the Tangerine Bowl (No. 15 Miami (Ohio) vs. Georgia), the Bluebonnet Bowl (No. 13 NC State vs. Houston), the Sun Bowl (Mississippi State vs. North Carolina), the Peach Bowl (Vanderbilt vs. Texas Tech) and the Fiesta Bowl (No. 17 BYU vs. Oklahoma State).

Then you had the major stuff. On Dec. 30, No. 6 Auburn played (and beat) No. 11 Texas in the Gator Bowl. On Dec. 31, No. 8 Nebraska outlasted No. 18 Florida in the Sugar Bowl. And in a New Year's Day tripleheader, No. 7 Penn State walloped No. 12 Baylor in the Cotton Bowl, No. 5 USC upset No. 3 Ohio State in the Rose Bowl and No. 9 Notre Dame upset No. 2 Alabama in a bowl for the second straight year, this time in the Orange Bowl.

And that was it. No. 1 Oklahoma, banned from the postseason -- which almost feels like even more of an ancient relic than having only 11 bowls -- won the national title with ease, USC finished No. 2 in the AP poll and No. 4 Michigan, out of the postseason because of the Big Ten's "only one team bowls" policy, moved up to No. 3 with Ohio State's loss.

Bowl season has, shall we say, evolved in the half-century since. (To those scoffing and saying the olden days were definitely better: You're wrong.) Eighty-two of the FBS' 134 teams, plus a pair of smoking hot FCS HBCU teams, will play in at least one postseason game in the coming weeks. Four playoff teams will each play in a pair of major bowls, and then two of them will meet in Atlanta for a national title game that isn't a bowl.

Getting into the specifics of bowl season can be a pretty disorienting experience, in case you couldn't tell, and that's before we even get to how many players will opt out or enter the transfer portal or how many teams will be led by interim head coaches. But then again, aside from the playoff games, you really aren't supposed to take in bowl season at a micro level. It's best to just turn on the TV and soak in whatever bowl game is on. (And there's almost always a bowl game on.)

To prepare for this macro experience, I'm going to lump the 40 or so bowl games -- not including first-round CFP games, which technically aren't bowls, or the Cotton and Orange Bowl semifinals, which don't have any teams yet -- into 13 categories. Some bowls show up in multiple places; just go with it.

Here's something you need to know about each game on the loaded bowl schedule.