Three bowl games have now been scrapped after a college football season that saw the spread of the College Football Playoff drive the more obscure bowl games a bit deeper into obscurity. The latest bowl which has ended went under four different names in its 29-year tenure in Detroit.
Another Bowl Bites the Dust
Starting in 1997 as the Motor City Bowl, the game was later known as the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, then the Quick Lane Bowl, and finally the GameAbove Sports Bowl. Now it’ll be known as obsolete after the plug was officially pulled on the game.
Given the far northern location of the game, it was always played in a dome, first the Pontiac Silverdome and then later in Ford Field when the NFL’s Detroit Lions moved there. The game historically featured a MAC team against a power conference foe. The ACC and Big Ten were providing the other squad in alternating years, although the leagues sometimes fulfilled their bowl quota otherwise and an alternative team would be sent to the game (like Nevada and New Mexico State in 2021 and 2022).
Toledo’s 2024 GameAbove Sports Bowl win was perhaps the biggest moment in the game’s history. | Kimberly P. Mitchell / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Among the most memorable moments in the history of the game was the 2024 battle, when Toledo outlasted Pittsburgh 48-46 in six overtimes, in what was the most overtimes played in an FBS bowl game ever. The game annually struggled with low attendance figures, with the last five games failing to reach 29,000 attendance in a stadium that seats 65,000.
Bowl Cancellations and Problems
Again, the cancellation of the GameAbove Sports Bowl is the third of the offseason, with the cancellations of the LA Bowl and the Bahamas Bowl being previously annouced. Filling bowl games has been increasingly difficult with the spread of the College Football Playoff from a four-team field to a 12-team field.
The 2025 postseason saw a 5-7 Appalachian State team in the Birmingham Bowl playing a regular season rematch because of a lack of otherwise eligible and interested teams. 5-7 Rice and 5-7 Mississippi State also drew bowl berths. Given the massive number of coaching moves and portal entrants, a number of teams turned down bowl berths– while Notre Dame, Kansas State, and Iowa State were traditionally eligible teams, a number of 5-7 squads (including Florida State and Auburn) also turned down bowls.
The need to trim down the number of bowl games has become something of an annual talking point. With the bowl field swollen to around 40 games, the loss of even three bowls will likely pass unnoticed in a post-season that will still likely manage to reward even lower conference teams with 6-6 records.
While Marcus Freeman’s Notre Dame team declined a bowl on principle, many other programs just don’t find the massive number of lower-tier bowls to be worth their time. | Michael Caterina-Imagn Images
