College bowl games

The following is a list of current, defunct, and proposed college football bowl games. Six bowl games are currently part of the College Football Playoff, a selection system that creates bowl matchups involving twelve of the top-ranked teams in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. There are also a number of other college football postseason invitationals, as well as several all-star games.

For nearly a century, bowl games were the purview of only the very best teams, but a steady proliferation of new bowl games required more teams, with 70 participating teams by the 2010–11 bowl season, then 80 participating teams by the 2015–16 bowl season. As a result, the NCAA has steadily reduced the criteria for bowl eligibility, allowing teams with a non-winning (6–6) record in 2010, further reducing requirements to allow teams with outright losing records (5-7) to be invited since 2012. Of the teams with losing records, the team with the best Academic Progress Rate score would be chosen first. While losing teams in bowl games has now become commonplace, there have been a few losing teams who have played in bowl games before the changes in bowl eligibility: 1945 Gator Bowl - Florida Gators (2-3-3), 1963 Sun Bowl - SMU (4-6), 1970 Tangerine Bowl - William & Mary - (5-6), and the 2001 New Orleans Bowl - North Texas (5-6). For the 2016–17 bowl season, 25% of the bowl participants (20 teams) did not have a winning record.

The tables below(College Football Playoff games, Other current Division I FBS bowl games) reflect the changes for the 2016-17 bowl season.

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