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New Year’s 6 Bowl Game Scores, History
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There are actually 2 seasons to every college football season.
There’s the one that runs from Labor Day weekend through the conference championships games.
And then there’s Bowl Season.
Who cares if only 12 of the teams that are playing in a bowl are in contention to join the list of college football national champions? There’s a trophy awarded after every game and you never know what you’ll see dumped over the winning coach to celebrate.
That’s why we watch the games, even the ones involving teams and players from conferences we know little to nothing about.
Bowl games are part of the tradition that makes college football so great.
Bowl Game Origins
There’s a reason the Rose Bowl is known as “The Granddaddy of Them All.” It’s because the annual game in Pasadena, Calif., was the first bowl game to be established. It was first played in 1902.
Sponsored by the Tournament of Roses Association, it was played as part of a New Year’s celebration that also included the popular parade that continues to this day. The inaugural game matched Michigan against Stanford. The Wolverines’ 49-0 win became the inspiration for the school’s fight song “Hail to the Victors,” which includes a reference to Michigan as “champions of the West.”
The Rose Bowl, which officially became the game’s name in 1923 when the stadium of the same name opened, was still college football’s only postseason game as late as 1930. But because of its success and popularity, other spin-offs began springing up in other areas of the country. The Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, the Orange Bowl in Miami and the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, were all established in 1935. The Cotton Bowl in Dallas came into existence in 1937.
By 1950, there were 8 college bowl games. The number increased to 11 by 1970, 15 by 1980 and 19 by 1990. Because of the growing number of programs participating at the Division I (later known as the Football Bowl Subdivision) level and the advent of domed stadiums that allow cold-weather cities to host games, the number of named bowls has now grown to 41.
While the bowls were once considered to be a reward for the most successful college teams in a given season, they’re now open to any team that finishes the regular season with a .500 record — and if there aren’t enough of those teams, a select few teams with a 5-7 record will be invited based solely on their academic success.
How Bowls Determine A National Champion
Unlike most sports it sponsors, including football in other subdivisions, the NCAA does not recognize an official national champion at the highest level of college football. As a result, the bowls have traditionally played a role in determining the team – or in some cases multiple teams – claiming the title.
Because conference tie-ins to the major bowls often prevented the top teams from playing one another, split championships were not uncommon prior to the mid-1990s. That brought about efforts to find ways of crowning a consensus champion.
The first attempt was the Bowl Alliance. Formed in 1995, it devised a system that – at least in theory – would create a bowl matchup between the top 2 teams in the final regular-season poll. But because the Rose Bowl refused to participate, sticking instead to its tradition of inviting teams from the Pac-10 and Big Ten, the system didn’t work.
Eventually, the Rose Bowl and the 2 holdout conferences agreed to join the rest of college football in what became known as the Bowl Championship Series, with the “championship” game rotated between the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange Bowls. The BCS era began in 1998, but even that had its flaws. In 2003, 1-loss LSU beat Oklahoma to win the BCS title. But the voters in the Associated Press poll voted 1-loss Rose Bowl champion Southern Cal as its No. 1 team. Then the following year, Auburn was left out of the championship picture despite being one of the nation’s 3 undefeated power conference teams.
It took until the 2014-15 season for the powers that be to agree on a Playoff system to replace the BCS. It started with a 4-team bracket with participants selected by a committee with the semifinal games rotated between members of the so-called “New Year’s 6.” In 2024-25, the field was expanded to its current 12-team format with both the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds played as part of the bowl lineup.
What Is The ‘New Year’s 6’?
The oldest and most prestigious games on the bowl calendar were once all played on New Year’s Day. They are the Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Rose and Sugar bowls. Though they are now played at various times during the week before and after Jan. 1 as they became incorporated into the College Football Playoff, they have retained the designation of “New Year’s Six.”
Rose Bowl Scores, History
The first Rose Bowl was played after the 1901 season and it has been played annually since 1916. All but 1 of the games has been played in Pasadena, Calif., with the only exception coming in 1942 when it was moved to Durham, NC — home of participating team Duke — over safety concerns after the attack on Pearl Harbor a month earlier.
Here is the final score of every Rose Bowl game, entering the 2025 season:
*-1942 game was played in Durham, NC
Orange Bowl Scores, History
The first Orange Bowl was played after the 1934 season, and the bowl game has been played every year since. Here is the final score of every Orange Bowl game, entering the 2025 season:
Sugar Bowl Scores, History
The first Sugar Bowl was played after the 1933 season. The game has been played in New Orleans every year since. Here is the final score of every Sugar Bowl game, entering the 2025 season:
Cotton Bowl Scores, History
The first Cotton Bowl was played after the 1935 season. The game has been played in the Dallas area every year since. Here is the final score of every Cotton Bowl game, entering the 2025 season:
Peach Bowl Scores, History
The Peach Bowl has been played in Atlanta since 1968. It was known as the Chick-fil-A Bowl between 2006 and 2013. Here is the final score of every Sugar Bowl game, entering the 2025 season:
Fiesta Bowl Scores, History
The Fiesta Bowl is the newest of the New Year’s 6 games, with the first game having been played after the 1971 season. The game has been played in The Phoenix area every year since. Here is the final score of every Fiesta Bowl game, entering the 2025 season:
Why Are The Games Called Bowls?
The term “bowl” was adopted from the shape and name of the stadium at which college football’s first postseason game. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. The game, which matched the top team from the East against the champions of the West, and its surrounding festivities were such a big success, other postseason games began popping up in other areas of the country. They also became known as “bowls,” even though not all of them were played in stadiums shaped like one.
Changing Names
Bowl games originally had names that reflected the cities or regions in which they were played. And some, including all of the New Year’s 6, still do, But in the 1990s, many of the games began adding corporate sponsors to their names in an effort to maximize revenue and increase payouts to the participating teams. As that practice evolved, a number of the bowls dropped their original names altogether and began using only the name of their corporate sponsor.
What was once known as the Citrus Bowl is now the Cheez-It Bowl. The Hall of Fame Bowl has become the Outback Bowl and has now become the ReliaQuest Bowl. The Motor City Bowl is now GameAbove Sports Bowl.
Just to name a few.
Most Bowl Appearances
Alabama has made the most bowl appearances in college football history with 77. The Crimson Tide also lead all programs in postseason victories with 45 to far outdistance SEC rival Georgia, which ranks second in both categories with 63 appearances and 38 wins.
And no, it’s not a typo or an omission that Notre Dame is missing from this list. While the Irish are fourth in all-time victories with 962, they’ve only participated in the postseason 45 times thanks to their school’s no-bowl policy that was in effect from 1926 — the year after their Rose Bowl victory against Stanford — until the 1970 Cotton Bowl.
Longest Active Bowl Streaks
Florida State has the unofficial record for most consecutive seasons with a bowl appearance. The Seminoles played in postseason games for 36 straight years between 1982-2017. But because their win against UCLA in the 2006 Emerald Bowl was vacated because of an academic issue, the NCAA does not recognize FSU’s record. That makes Nebraska’s 35-year run from 1969-2003 the longest official streak.
Here is a look at the longest current streaks of bowl participation, entering the 2025-26 season:
Longest Bowl Droughts
Nebraska lost 5 of its final 6 games to end the 2024 regular season. But that 1 victory, a 44-25 Senior Day win against Wisconsin in the next-to-last week of the schedule, was enough to earn the Cornhuskers a trip to the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium and end an agonizing 6-year stretch without a bowl appearance. Vanderbilt, Navy and Colorado State also ended long postseason absences in 2025.
Here is a look at the longest bowl droughts that remain active:
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
