You watch these Future Power Rankings from ESPN, projecting us out through 2027, and I just get to thinking about what bowl season used to mean around here. Remember when the Peach Bowl was a New Years Day game that actually meant something? When we went to the 1993 Florida Citrus Bowl and beat Ohio State, that was a big deal because we earned that trip. We played in the old school bowls with tradition, the Gator Bowl, the Outback Bowl, the Peach Bowl when it was still at the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. You knew exactly what you were getting when you signed with Georgia back then. You played for the SEC Championship and then you went to a bowl game that matched conference champions against each other, not some computer formula picking 12 teams.
Now we got this expanded playoff and I cannot even keep track of which bowls are hosting quarterfinals and which ones are just glorified exhibition games. The Rose Bowl used to be the Rose Bowl, now its just a playoff site. The Sugar Bowl used to be the Sugar Bowl. We went to the 2002 Sugar Bowl against Florida State and that felt like a national championship game atmosphere. Now everything is about the CFP rotation and TV contracts. I miss the days when you could circle a bowl game on the calendar in November and know your team was playing for something real, not just a participation trophy in some 12 team bracket. Even the lower tier bowls had character, the Liberty Bowl, the Music City Bowl. Now half the good teams opt out and the whole thing feels like a spring scrimmage.
I will always love this program but I sure do miss the old bowl system where every game had its own identity and history. These kids today have no idea what they missed.