The Real Reason There Are So Many Bowl Games In College Football
The college football bowl season is now upon us and with the addition of the college football playoff, there are now 39 bowl games that will be competed in by 76 different schools.
The reason there are so many bowl games has little to do with demand. After all, many of these games will be played in half-empty stadiums. The real reason gets back to who has the most invested in the bowl games, ESPN and their parent company, Disney.
Of the 39 games, 38 will be broadcast by ESPN or one of their sister networks, ABC and ESPN2. The only bowl game that is not on a Disney-owned network is the Sun Bowl which will air on CBS. Meanwhile, the reason ESPN is willing to pay to broadcast as many bowl games as possible is because live programming is what makes ESPN the king of cable and the bowl games fill empty time slots.
In other words, don't look for fewer bowl games anytime soon.
