The heyday of the minor bowl games were the days when really solid teams would square off in an exciting bowl game in the weeks before the big New Year's Day bowls. Sometimes it was a rare opportunity for college football fans across the country to see military academies and minor conference champions on the field. Some of my favorite times as a football fan were those days in the 1980s and early 1990s watching the Liberty Bowl, Holiday Bowl, Peach Bowl, etc. on a weeknight when we could stay up late because school was on the Christmas break.
I remember when the Big Ten only allowed the conference champion to play in a post-season bowl game.
Face it........ bowls are/were the professionalization of college sports.
Bowls were exclusively held to generate TV and ticket sales that went to the college athletic programs
They were also nice vacation sites too and now many of them have expanded into sites that are not so desirable cold weather vacations
Plus are just too many bowls so it dilutes the product and people don’t want to travel nearly as much during these Covid times fights