Want Some Cotton With Them Roses, Sugar? How Football Bowl Games Came to Be

Football bowls are either elliptical open-topped stadiums in which football games are played or specific athletic contests. Stadiums called bowls are derived from the Roman Colosseum, built about 2000 years ago. In 1914, the Yale Bowl at Yale University became the first bowl built for American football. The first American football game played as a bowl, but in a park and not a stadium, was the 1902 Rose Bowl The Rose Bowl stadium was built in 1923. For many years there were only five major bowl games. Now there are over 40.