They don’t make bowl games like they used to, and that’s a fact. I was thinking about it watching this Val Ackerman retirement story about the Big East. It’s all about conference survival and TV deals now, not the reward of a destination. I remember the pure joy of the 1990 Citrus Bowl trip, the whole week in Orlando, the feeling that you’d arrived after a long saeson of battling in the ACC. That was a celebration for the players, the coaches, the band, and the fans who saved up all year to make the trip. It was an event. Now? It’s just a branded stop on a postseason tour, another line on a resume for kids who might be in the portal before the commemorative hat even arrives.
The Peach Bowl used to mean something specific. It was a New Year’s Day tradition in Atlanta, a matchup you looked forward to all season. The Gator Bowl in Jacksonville had its own unique flavor, a gritty, hard-nosed kind of game that fit the old ACC-SEC rivalry perfectly. Even the Continental Tire Bowl, for all its corporate naming, felt like a genuine reward for a solid season, a chance to play in Charlotte against a good Big East team. You knew the teams, you knew the stakes, and the players on that field had built something together over years. They weren’t a collection of mercenaries assembled twelve weeks prior.
What we’ve lost is the narrative. The bowl game was the final chapter of a team’s story. Think about the 1995 team that went to the Peach Bowl. That season had an arc, with players who grew from freshmen into leaders. The bowl was the culmination. Now, with this portal madness, the team that starts the season in August might bear no resemblance to the group that stumbles into some December exhibition in Detroit or Phoenix. How can you care about the “Bad Boy Mowers Bowl” when half the roster is already packing for their next NIL deal? There’s no continuity, no shared history to celebrate.
It cheapens the entire accomplishment. Making a bowl used to be a benchmark. It meant you were one of the top teams in your conference, that you had a winning record and deserved a reward. Now, with 40-plus bowls, it feels like a participation trophy for any program that can scrape together six wins against a soft schedule. The magic is gone. The trips are shorter, the events are less special, and the players treat it like a business trip before they hit the open market. I miss the days when the bowl game was the destination, not just a pit stop on the way to the next transaction. The sport has traded its soul for inventory, and the bowls are the hollowed-out proof.
mark my words: chandler rivers getting kiper's love proves our secondary is elitte. it's a yearly tradition.