This year’s bowl season was filled with 47 games, including 11 contests in the College Football Playoff. The CFP is a cash cow, raking in hundreds of millions.

The minor bowl games are often geared to fill TV programming, as ESPN owns and operates 17 of them. It’s all different from why bowl games were created in the first place.

Bowls were originally envisioned as a tourist draw, a way for cities, primarily in warm climates, to market themselves. The oldest bowl games were the brainchild of city planners, who saw dollar signs – only different ones than today.

The first bowl game was the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 1902, though it was under an unusual name. The event was sponsored by the Tournament of Roses Association and created to help pay for the Rose Parade, which was a much bigger deal at the time.

The association had begun considering the game in 1900, as they sought, in the words of one source, “a sports attraction that would grab national interest.” The original name of the game was “Tournament East-West Football Game,” as it was intended to match the top teams of both regions.

The name was not changed until 1923, when the Rose Bowl stadium was opened in Pasadena. The title of the game was taken from the oval shape of modern football stadiums, a practice that has lasted through the decades.

That first Rose Bowl featured Michigan, which was beginning a five-year unbeaten streak. From 1901-05, the Wolverines were a combined 55-1-1, with the only loss coming in the 1905 season finale, a 2-0 setback at the University of Chicago. The tie was a 6-6 draw at Minnesota in 1903.

Michigan’s opponent was Stanford, and it was no contest in a 49-0 Wolverines win. The game was so lopsided that it was stopped with nine minutes remaining.

The rout did not impress the Tournament of Roses Association, which did not hold another football game until 1916. In the meantime, they filled the day with a polo match in 1903, chariot races from 1904-12, and two new events in 1913, a race between a camel and an elephant that preceded an ostrich race.

The ostrich race lasted only one year, as one of the riders was thrown, then kicked across the track by the bird.

Football finally returned to the Tournament of Roses in 1916 as Washington State defeated Brown 14-0. During World War I, college teams did not make up the Rose Bowl; rather, military base squads, which were composed of the nation’s best players, took part.

In the 1930s, several Southern cities, looking to boost tourism and commerce, joined the act, and a few more games were created. One was the Orange Bowl, established by business and political leaders in Miami in response to the success of the Rose Bowl.

First discussed in 1926, the Orange Bowl was seen as a way to pump money into the city and state during the Depression. In 1927, leaders in New Orleans began talking about a game of their own, which eventually was launched as the Sugar Bowl.

The games were set several weeks after the end of the regular season, owing to travel limitations of the time, as few in the era traveled by air.

On Jan. 1, 1935, the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl were played for the first time. That same day, the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, opened with a matchup between two Texas high schools. The first collegiate Sun Bowl was held on New Year’s Day 1936. Next came the Cotton Bowl, a Dallas game originally financed by a Texas oil tycoon, on Jan. 1, 1937.

In a time that was years away from conference tie-ins and NCAA divisions, the first bowls had some seemingly odd matchups.

The inaugural Orange Bowl featured Bucknell, which beat the hometown University of Miami 26-0, with Catholic edging Ole Miss 20-19 a year later. Hardin-Simmons, which now competes at Division III, won the first two Sun Bowls.

The Orange, Sugar and Cotton remained as so-called “major bowl games” for most of their existence. The Sun Bowl, meanwhile, has an unusual TV distinction; it has been broadcast on CBS since 1968, one of the longest-running agreements between a sporting event and a single network.

Other older bowl games include the Gator, which was first played on Jan. 1, 1946, and the Citrus Bowl, which debuted the following New Year’s Day. The Liberty Bowl began in 1959.

The Peach Bowl (1968) and Fiesta Bowl (1971) are now part of the “New Year’s Six” that comprises the CFP. The Independence Bowl, which takes its name from the American Bicentennial, opened in 1976, with the Holiday Bowl in 1978.

Many of today’s bowl games were founded in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Some have even strayed from the traditional warm-weather idea, as bowls are now played in Boise, Idaho, and Detroit, as well as Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

• Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Illinois. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.