College football's newfound parity has been a major talking point through the 2024 season. For a multitude of perfectly sensible reasons, the good teams aren't as good at the power conference level, and some of the bad teams aren't as bad.

Things really don't look much different now that expanded 12-team College Football Playoff is down to four teams remaining.

That pair, and others like it, became part of notable trend in the 2024-25 bowl season: 21 of the 30 non-Playoff bowls that aired on an ESPN network through Jan. 2 saw year-over-year viewership increases, the majority of them by 20 percent or more.