I am 43 years old and barely remember a time like that. By the mid 90s, it seemed like most bowls were consolidating under the ESPN empire. Even before the BCS era, most bowls had already started going way beyond the ‘traditional’ tie ins and legislating which leagues team #x,y,z would play against which other leagues #a,b,c. They were ruining the sport with money even back then. In 1980, there were 15 bowl games. in 1990, there were 19. Then by 2000, there were 25. 2010 saw 35. By 2015, there were 41 bowl games!
I remember the 80s just chilling with the family watching football on New Year’s Day, and I loved years like the early 90s Copper Bowl, Freedom Bowl, and early 2000s Vegas Bowls for the Utes. That 92 season was my first year living in Utah, and it really felt like the resurrection of the program. Sadly, near the beginning of 2000s, ESPN had really started to acquire a lot of the bowls and the BCS had already done away with the importance of any of the remaining hard and fast traditions. New Year’s day stopped being THE day as ESPN started moving them all over the calendar in Decemeber which made these bowls feel even less significant. I am really glad we had our 2003 season and that we got to qualify for the BCS with the super strict criteria (biased criteria that still GUARANTEED Pitt a BCS bowl), but yeah, that was really the end of bowl excitement for me and a lot of people (except for whatever bowl the Utes were in).
Utah @ 
Baylor .
