The New Year’s Six began in the 2014 season. The NY6 structure followed the 16-year Bowl Championship Series, which ran from 1998 through 2013. The BCS’s first eight years, 1998 through 2005, had four bowl games: Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta. In 2006, the BCS increased to a five-game rotation.
Instead of having the Rose Bowl become the BCS championship game, the BCS kept the Rose Bowl intact and added a separate BCS National Championship Game as a fifth bowl so that two more teams would be able to play in a BCS game.
The New Year’s Six was a way of adding a sixth top-tier bowl game to the regular rotation when the College Football Playoff came into existence in 2014. The six bowls enable 12 teams to participate in a big-stage bowl. Setting aside a spot for the Group of Five champion every year — which was not guaranteed under the BCS — is an adjustment which accompanied the creation of the New Year’s Six.
Let’s look at the Group of Five champions in New Year’s Six bowl games from 2014 through 2021. We’ll see how Tulane compares to those eight teams when the Green Wave face USC in the 2023 Cotton Bowl.
One note: When we refer to the “2017 Peach Bowl,” we know that the game was on January 1, 2018, but we’re referring to the 2017 season’s Peach Bowl game, so that you know we’re referring to the 2017 season for the Group of Five champion in the New Year’s Six.