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It is very simple why college teams in the south make more bowl games than their counterparts in the north. It comes down to location. If you take a minute and think about where the bulk of the bowl games are played, you will see that there are very few in the northern states. All of the "marquee" bowl games are played in the southern states. The bowl committees want to bring in the schools that are close in proximity so that they can get more fans there and generate more revenue.

There are four BCS bowls; the Orange (Miami), the Sugar (New Orleans), the Rose (Pasadena) and the Fiesta (Glendale). All of these top tier bowls are in the south. Then you can look and see who is matched up in these bowls. In the Orange you have Virginia Tech and Kansas. It depends on where your division between north and south is if either of these teams are in the south. In the Sugar you have Georgia and Hawaii. Georgia is definitely a southern team. In the Rose you have USC and Illinois. USC is in the south. In the Fiesta you have Oklahoma and West Virginia. Oklahoma is definitely a southern school. The BCS Championship Game (New Orleans) pairs up LSU and Ohio State. LSU is a southern team and basically it will be a home game for them.

Out of all of the bowl games the only ones played outside of the south are: Motor City Bowl (Detroit), Emerald Bowl (San Francisco), Roady's Humanitarian Bowl (Boise) and the International Bowl (Toronto).

Another factor to way into for southern teams going to more bowl games would be that they have an unfair recruiting advantage. What player would want to go play somewhere that it is going to be cold most of the season? In the southern states they don't really have to worry about that. Moderate weather year round is a huge recruiting bonus.

You can also look at the level of high school talent in the southern states. Texas, Southern California and Florida produce a good amount of the players who go on to play in the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Div. 1A). The only state in the north that produces a large amount of high school talent is Ohio.

There are several contributing factors that come into play on this issue. But if you look at this year's BCS games, the north is starting to catch up.

Learn more about this author, Phillip Underwood.
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