Bowl History: The California Bowl

With the advent of cable television in the late 1970s, the prospect of more teams playing in post-season bowl games started to rise. For most of the history of college football, there was just the Big Six Bowl Games (The Rose, Sugar, Peach, Cotton, Orange, and Sun Bowls) with occasional other games popping up, such as the Pineapple Bowl and the Salad Bowl(which was a real thing, I promise). The growth of television in general led to an increase in bowl games in the 1960s and 1970s, but most of these were still locked away from the mid-major teams. Cable TV though changed everything, and the California Bowl was one of the first to jump on to this train, and made the bold decision to also start the bowl season, instead of being right around New Year’s Day like before. Usually on the 2nd weekend of December, the Big West Conference would square off against the Mid-American Conference, usually pitting champion against champion.

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