9 wins 3 years in a row!

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Here's a memory stat for you guys from 50 years ago:

The Rose, Cotton, Orange and Sugar were the 4 major bowls. There were always about 3-4 teams among the 8 playing in them that had a shot at the Natty. Sometimes, a split one. Among the few, the most impressive win for it. The bowls in the next tier were the Gator, Bluebonnet, Sun, Fiesta and Liberty. The Fiesta was somewhat new at the time, pairing the WAC champion and an 8 or 9 win team from one of the bigger conferences. Keep in mind, teams were playing 11 and 10 game schedules. The last tier were the Peach and Tangerine, usually pairing a 7 win power league team and a small Division 1A team.

22 teams made bowls

Rose, Cotton, Orange, and Sugar were once THE New Years Day bowls and were where the Big 10, Pac 8/10, Southwest Conference, Big 8, and SEC champions were invited. The SEC often got screwed in the national champion voting. The winner of Oklahoma and Nebraska usually got the Orange Bowl invite and often had an easy path to the National Championship. It was more like the Big 2 plus 6 mediocres.

Then the Gator was once the clearly 5th best bowl game and was the New Years Eve game. Weird that it was SEC versus SEC in Dickey’s last game.

Then the Fiesta came along and kind of bought their way into being the 5th New Years Day bowl game.

After the NYD bowl games, most of the rest weren’t even on TV.