A bold take on the bowl season: ranking every college football bowl game from Birmingham to the Orange, while keeping the core facts, context, and timing intact.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
College Football (https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/football/)
This annual ranking lays out every bowl game tied to the season, up through the College Football Playoff quarterfinals. The goal is to identify which matchups are must-see television and which ones can be skipped without missing much.
Yesterday at 5:13 p.m. EST
Analysis by Patrick Stevens
There was no more entertaining spectacle in college football this past weekend than the chorus of skepticism and catastrophe forecasts that greeted Notre Dame’s choice to skip a bowl game after failing to crack the College Football Playoff bracket (https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/12/07/college-football-playoff-bracket-rankings/).
What we heard reflected a mix of self-serving motives and league-wide anxiety: many people who benefit from the bowl system reacted with alarm as the sport’s branding powerhouse declined an invitation, arguing that a head-to-head August matchup should carry less weight than the fresh playoff rankings released this week.
