College football bowls 2025: Storylines to watch for every game - ESPN

The «Bowls are dead!» chorus is growing louder. Notre Dame opted out after what had to feel like one of the crueler playoff snubs imaginable (non-2023 Florida State edition, anyway). So did Kansas State and Iowa State (who, to be fair, lost their head coaches and had basically taken a bowl trip to Ireland to start the season already). When the Birmingham Bowl was looking for an opponent for Georgia Southern, it had to search pretty deep into the bin of 5-7 teams before finding one willing and able to make the flight. The vibes have certainly been better.

Once the field is set, however, the vibes don't matter. With two delightful Saturday matchups — Prairie View A&M vs. South Carolina State in the Cricket Celebration bowl at noon ET, then Boise State vs. Washington in the Bucked Up LA Bowl Hosted by Gronk at 8 p.m. (with Army-Navy in between, of course) — the train leaves the station. Then we're off on a three-week journey from Atlanta to Boise and Frisco and Hawai'i and Boston and Birmingham and El Paso and all points in between.

Some teams will be more excited to be there than others, and some players will opt out, and the show will go on regardless. We'll soak in the last college football we can get, we'll see players dump french fries and mayonnaise (in separate bowl games, though that would be delightful together) on victorious coaches, we'll murder an anthropomorphized Pop-Tart, and we'll all have a lovely time.

The deader we pretend bowls are, the more entertaining they turn out to be. To prepare you for the silliness, I'm here to lump each bowl game — not including first-round College Football Playoff games, which technically aren't bowls, or the Fiesta and Peach Bowl semifinals, which don't have any teams yet —