the 2025-26 Bowl Game Categorization: A Guide to the Silliness

The “Bowls are dead!” chorus is growing louder. Notre Dame opted out after what had to feel like one of the crueler playoff snubs imaginable (non-2023 Florida State edition, anyway). So did Kansas State adn Iowa State (who, to be fair, lost their head coaches and had basically taken a bowl trip to ireland to start the season already). When the Birmingham Bowl was looking for an opponent for Georgia Southern, it had to search pretty deep into the bin of 5-7 teams before finding one willing and able to make the flight. The vibes have certainly been better.

Once the field is set, however, the vibes don’t matter. With two delightful Saturday matchups — Prairie View A&M vs. South Carolina state in the Cricket Party bowl at noon ET, then Boise State vs. Washington in the Bucked Up LA Bowl Hosted by Gronk at 8 p.m. (with Army-navy in between, of course) — the train leaves the station. Then we’re off on a three-week journey from Atlanta to Boise and Frisco and Hawai’i and Boston and Birmingham and El Paso and all points in between.

some teams will be more excited to be there than others, and some players will opt out, and the show will go on irrespective. We’ll soak in the last college football we can get, we’ll see players dump french fries and mayonnaise (in separate bowl games, though that would be delightful together) on victorious coaches, we’ll murder an anthropomorphized Pop-Tart, and we’ll all have a lovely time.

The deader we pretend bowls are, the more entertaining they turn out to be.To prepare you for the silliness, I’m here to lump each bowl game — not including first-round College Football Playoff games, which technically aren’t bowls, or the Fiesta and Peach Bowl semifinals, which don’t have teams yet — into 13 categories. (Some show up in multiple categories. It’s fine.)

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

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## The Bowls Are Back, and They Still feel a Little Strange

The college Football Playoff is here, and with it comes the annual debate over the role of the New Year’s Six bowls. It’s a strange dynamic, really. I’m the biggest fan of these bowls basically being used as neutral-site venues for a playoff game. I remember last year’s remarkable Arizona State-Texas quarterfinal, for instance, but I had to think for a moment to remember that it was technically also the Peach Bowl. To me that almost dilutes the value of these major bowls.

the best way around this problem, however, is when teams such as Indiana or Texas Tech — college football’s greatest usurpers at the moment — are involved. Indiana and Ohio State played in a Big Ten championship game last week that had almost no playoff consequences, but you couldn’t tell that to Indiana fans who desperately wanted to see their team both pull one over on the Buckeyes for the first time sence 1988 and win a share of their first Big Ten title (and earn their first Rose bowl berth) since 1967. The Hoosiers will play — and be favored against — a college football blue blood there, too, be it Oklahoma or Alabama. They will obviously hope to play two more games after this one,but this will still feel like an awfully big deal.texas Tech, meanwhile, will be playing in its first Orange Bowl. It is an injustice that the Red Raiders weren’t sent to the far closer Cotton Bowl — Ohio State was sent there instead, and there’s a chance it could create a bit of a home-field advantage for the Buckeyes’ opponent if they face Texas A&M there — but it is still a neat rarity for a program that is successfully spending its way into the big time.

For all the problems facing this sport at the moment, we could see Indiana winning the Rose Bowl and Texas tech winning the Orange Bowl, clinching a semifinal appearance against each other and assuring that one of them will play the national title. That’s pretty cool. (Granted, we also could end up with alabama-Oregon or something far more familiar.)

## dynasties in the making?

CFP Quarterfinal at the Goodyear Cotton bowl Classic: Miami–Texas A&M winner vs. No. 2 Ohio state Buckeyes (Dec. 31)

CFP Quarterfinal at the Allstate Sugar Bowl: Tulane–Ole Miss winner vs. No. 3 <## Bowl Games to Watch: Beyond the Playoffs The College Football Playoff will grab most of the attention, but the bowl season offers plenty of intriguing matchups. Here's a look at a few that stand out:

Armed Forces Bowl: Army vs. Air Force (Dec. 23)