Alamo, Pop-Tarts Bowls Lead Widespread Spike in Non-CFP Bowl Game Ratings

Long live college football's strange, byzantine postseason.

The Pop-Tarts Bowl mascot after No. 18 Iowa State's 42–41 win over No. 15 Miami on Dec. 28, 2024. / Jasen Vinlove-Imagn Images

College football's bowl system ranks among the oddest sports postseason structures in the world—a weird constellation of exhibition games that has only organized itself into a cogent championship-deciding system in the last four decades.

It's something else, too: a money printer for the sport, as evidenced by eye-popping ratings figures gathered by SportsMediaWatch's Jon Lewis in a Tuesday afternoon piece.

The headliner is No. 17 BYU's 36–14 win over No. 20 Colorado in the Alamo Bowl, which drew eight million viewers Saturday evening to become the most-watched minor bowl game since 2019's Citrus Bowl between No. 17 Michigan and No. 9 Alabama.

The Pop-Tarts, Liberty, Pinstripe and Birmingham Bowls drew 6.8, 4.2, 4.2 and 4.1 million viewers, respectively, on the ESPN family of networks. All four of those numbers represented their respective games' largest audiences in at least nine years.

All told, Lewis cited 11 different bowl games as having posted audience increases. A 12-team College Football Playoff may be here to stay, but it doesn't appear the funny little games that orbit it are going anywhere either.

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