At first, a bowl game was a reward for an exceptional season. The threshold of 6 wins wasn’t a guarantee; you could win 7 games in the 1970s and still not get a bid (what’s up 1975 Commodores). Then the proliferation of bowls began - and pretty soon, you had bowl games in attractive December locales like Boston or the Bronx or Boise, and every major bowl had at least one minor bowl appended to it (and some not-so-major bowls began doubling up as well) and pretty soon you got to the point where ESPN owned most of the bowls and created one on the spot just so that every single 6-win team could get in.
A Modest Pro-Bowls-Al
