Bowl season has never been bigger, but is that a good thing?

The Music City Bowl's payout per team went up from $3.4 million to $5.5 million. (USATSI)

Welcome to bowls on steroids. The sheer volume of this college football bowl season is unprecedented in terms of number of games, dollars generated and exposure for the sport.

Over 23 days, 39 postseason football games will be played. Your eyes will glaze over -- and that's just from deciphering the new bowl names and locations.

We now live in a bowl world where the Bahamas is a host, the state of Alabama stages three games, Minnesota and Missouri get to play each other in Florida, and an online currency is sponsoring a bowl. Here's hoping the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl pays out in real dollars, not bitcoin, which is challenging the Russian ruble as the worst investment of 2014.

Make no mistake: Conferences and schools are being paid handsomely for investing in this new bowl world. They took the initiative to provide fans a four-team playoff, create other attractive bowl matchups, lower guaranteed ticket allotments and get higher payouts in return.

Conference Bowl Money in 2013-14
Conference	Bowl Payout	Surplus After School Expenses
SEC	$55.9 million	$38.7 million
Big Ten	$50.7 million	$35.3 million
ACC	$49.5 million	$32.7 million
Big 12	$47.0 million	$36.8 million
Pac-12	$39.1 million	$28.1 million
AAC	$34.6 million	$24.9 million
C-USA	$7.5 million	$3.5 million
Mountain West	$7.2 million	$2.4 million
Independents	$6.0 million	$1.7 million
Sun Belt	$5.4 million	$3.8 million
Mid-American	$4.4 million	$1.5 million
Source: NCAA

Across the country, many bowl directors are taking a wait-and-see approach. They hope for enough desirable matchups over the length of their six-year contracts, knowing bowl crowds have declined four straight years, fans are well-accustomed to buying cheaper tickets on the secondary market and title sponsorships quickly come and go.

All of this is happening as the College Football Playoff emerges with the New Year's Six bowls -- potentially creating an even greater delineation between the marquee bowls and everyone else. However, it's far from certain that huge gap will surface or hurt the lower-tiered bowls.

"It's certainly an issue we're watching closely," said Wright Waters, executive director of the Football Bowl Association. "There will be a lot of attention to it this year because it's brand new. You shouldn't make knee-jerk reactions on one year. You'll try to project what the impact will be over a period of years."

The Power Five conferences will nearly double their financial dollars in the CFP compared to the Bowl Championship Series. The SEC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC each receive $50 million as a baseline amount from the first year of the playoff. The Group of Five conferences remaining from the FBS share $75 million (more than five times what they received in 2013).

Payouts are increasing for lower-tiered bowls as well. For example, the Music City Bowl's payout per team went up from $3.4 million to $5.5 million.

Thirty-five bowls paid $309.9 million to the 10 conferences and independents in 2013-14, according to NCAA data. When factoring out institutional bowl expenses reported by the participating schools, the conferences/independents had a surplus of $212.2 million. The FBA expects the total payout to increase by 20-25 percent this year.

Within the bowl industry, there will be watchful eyes on how this massive system works.

Are there too many bowls?

There are usually two camps among bowl directors about the ever-increasing number of bowl games. Scott Ramsey, president of the Music City Bowl and who has an attractive LSU-Notre Dame matchup this season, falls in the camp that bowl proliferation doesn't matter much.

"I don't think having 39 or 30 games will matter to the individual fan bases," Ramsey said. "For us, it's whether Nashville is an attractive destination and is pairing these teams together enough to make you come or watch?

"Now, from a standpoint of national title sponsorship, I think we need some settling in on the College Football Playoff and New Year's Six to see the impact on that. Also, in cities like ours with NFL teams, you've got NFL potential dates and New Year's Eve and New Year's Day off limits, a very limited post-January schedule, and now ESPN has a tighter window to cram in premium matchups. That's worth watching."

Then there's the camp belonging to TaxSlayer Bowl president Rick Catlett, who claims the number of bowls have hurt the system.

"I think there are a whole lot of bowl directors who fear waking up in the morning, and instead of their thought process being how do we make it work, a lot of them worry about themselves," Catlett said. "It's easy for me to say. I'm 22 years in the business. I get some of the guys in their second or third year feeling that way. We have to fix the system, the postseason experience, and I think we're moving in that right direction.

"Will the playoff take some of the luster off some of the other bowls? No. Having 38 bowl games has taken the luster off it. It won't be the new system, it will be the overabundance. When Bobby Bowden used to say he's been to 16 straight bowl games, that really meant something back in the '80s and '90s. It doesn't mean a whole lot."

Ten years ago, 48 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision teams played in bowls. This season, 59 percent of the FBS will be in the postseason. A quarter of this year's bowl teams beat zero or one FBS teams that finished with a winning record.

A special nod goes to the five bowl teams that beat no winning FBS teams: UTEP (7-5), Bowling Green (7-6), Iowa (7-5), Washington (8-5) and East Carolina (8-4). Catlett isn't naive as to why these teams and others are playing 39 postseason games and a 40th will come on line next year with the Cure Bowl in Orlando.

"The mothership wants to have programming," Catlett said, referring to ESPN. "In 1995 when the NCAA said we can't stop the growth of bowl games, the battle was lost. I don't know anybody that doesn't believe that the proliferation of bowl games [has] hurt attendance and the ability to sell sponsorships. Fortunately, ESPN is such a good partner that it hasn't affected our television rights fees, but that's the next thing that will probably be hurt. Why continue the escalation of paying our bowl games more and more when there's no leverage? They're all on ESPN."

Bowl games provide higher viewership for ESPN, which owns 11 bowl games, than almost anything else it could broadcast over the holidays. The average bowl game almost doubles the number for a regular-season NBA broadcast. Nineteen of 35 bowls increased their ratings last year. Additional bowl games also popped up this year because lower-profile conferences felt they were being underserved in the postseason system.

Lost for some time in this bowl world is brand recognition. Bowl games are no different than other parts of corporate America, where the trend now is for shorter title sponsorship deals.

Sixteen returning bowl games have a new name this year. Some of them are subtle changes. Others are pretty significant, such as the Gator Bowl losing Gator entirely and turning into the TaxSlayer Bowl.

If you go to a bowl sponsored by AdvoCare V100, you're now in Houston, not Shreveport, La. If you're at a bowl sponsored by Buffalo Wild Wings, you'll find yourself in Orlando, not Scottsdale, Ariz. The Fight Hunger Bowl, once starved for a title sponsor after losing Kraft, can now feed itself as the Foster Farms Bowl. Returning bowls in Birmingham and Hawaii, both owned by ESPN, don't have title sponsors.

"You'd like to have stability and create a brand," Ramsey said. "But you're so crunched to meet the payout guarantees every year that when you only have limited revenue opportunities with title sponsorship, TV rights and ticket sales, you've got to negotiate to get the title sponsorship at maximum value. That's just the nature of the industry."

ESPN has sold 15 official sponsorships for the College Football Playoff, up from 12 that it had during the BCS era. Rob Temple, vice president of ESPN's Sports Management Group, said the sponsorships will produce more marketing efforts in the second year.

An example of marketing efforts this year: The national championship game will have the Taco Bell "Live Mas" student section. Temple referenced that effort without a trace of irony as an antidote to the corporate environment of a lucrative title game.

"This whole year has been the year of the sales cycle and lawyers," Temple said. "Next year will be the fun. Once we get through this year, know what it is, and have a lot of actuals for this, I think you're going to see our 15 officials have even more fun next year."

'Antiquated' bowl ticket system

On the surface, Mississippi State vs. Georgia Tech should be a fairly attractive game at the Orange Bowl. Yes, they aren't exactly brand-name teams with widespread fan bases. Still, they're both top-12 teams.

At times this month, though, a fan could purchase a ticket to the Orange Bowl through TicketCity for $2. Orange Bowl spokesman Larry Wahl said that could be due in part because the vast majority of fans who bought Orange Bowl tickets in advance were guaranteed the chance to buy CFB semifinal tickets at the Orange next year. If you don't want Georgia Tech-Mississippi State tickets that came with it, you put them on the market.

Make no mistake: Fans are well aware how easy it is to buy cheaper tickets at places other than their school or the bowl.

Bowl Name Change
New Bowl Name	Old Bowl Name
AdvoCare V100 Texas	Texas
Bahamas	Game did not exist
Birmingham	BBVA Compass
Bitcoin St. Petersburg	Beef 'O Brady's St. Petersburg
Boca Raton Bowl	Game did not exist
Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus	Capital One
Capital One Orange	Discover Orange
Chick-fil-A Peach	Chick-fil-A
Duck Commander Independence	AdvoCare V100
Foster Farms	Fight Hunger
Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic	AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic
Hawaii	Sheraton Hawaii
Lockheed Martin Armed Forces	Bell Helicopter Armed Forces
Miami Beach	Game did not exist
Quick Lane	Game did not exist (replaced Little Caesars Pizza Bowl)
Raycom Camelia	Game did not exist
Rose Bowl Game Presented by Northwestern Mutual	Rose Bowl Game Presented by Vizio
TaxSlayer	Taxslayer.com Gator
TicketCity Cactus	Buffalo Wild Wings
Vizio Fiesta	Tostitos Fiesta
Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas	Heart of Dallas

"The secondary market is so commonplace now that it's really hard to track where your ticket buyers are coming and understanding what the trigger is they really want," Ramsey said. "Is it location? Destination? Price? Matchup? It's really difficult to get your arms around on that and it's something nationally we have to collectively look at."

Michigan State has an unsold allotment of tickets to the Cotton Bowl for an attractive matchup against Baylor. Athletic director Mark Hollis told MLive.com the bowl-ticket process has become "antiquated" by not maturing with today's technology.

Boise State is having trouble selling all of its 12,500-ticket allotment to the Fiesta Bowl against Arizona. The Idaho Statesman reported that part of the problem is the Fiesta Bowl has undercut Boise State on some tickets. In some upper-level sections, Boise State is selling tickets for twice as much as the Fiesta Bowl is charging.

Last year, conferences absorbed $14.1 million in bowl ticket expenses and schools absorbed $9.6 million. It's worth noting there are schools selling out their ticket allotments fast this season. Conferences reduced the number of tickets schools must buy from bowls, in some cases cutting the allotment in half.

"It helps you," Catlett said. "It keeps you from having seats you're counting in your inventory sold and you show up on game day and there are 5,000 empty seats. I'd rather have those tickets to sell."

The average announced attendance at bowl games has declined four straight years. Bowls produced 48,989 fans per game in 2013-14, the third straight year the postseason produced its lowest average since 1978-79, when 15 bowls averaged 48,404 fans per game.

The decrease can't simply be attributed to more games equating to a lower average. Twenty of the 35 bowls reported attendance declines last season, including ongoing trends of smaller crowds for some prominent bowls.

One thing seems certain for this oversized bowl world: College football will have never experienced a day quite like Jan. 1, 2015. The sport will reclaim New Year's Day with No. 5 Baylor vs. No. 8 Michigan State as a Cotton Bowl tease before the national semifinals of No. 2 Oregon vs. No. 3 Florida State and No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 4 Ohio State. ESPN is predicting the ratings for the semifinals will compare to the audiences for the old BCS national championship game.

Welcome to the new reality of the bowl world. Everything is bigger.