New Year's Day Bowl Thread

Historically speaking, January 1 is traditionally the biggest day of the year in college football. There was once a time when the day was dominated by bowl games, including all of your traditional biggies like the Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Sugar, and Rose ("the Grand Daddy of them All!"). The New Year's Day bowl tradition had taken a hit during the BCS era, as the legacy bowl games tended to get spread out over several days, leading up to the erstwhile BCS National Championship Game (which used to itself be one of the traditional bowl games before becoming a separate bowl game unto itself).

The BCS era is now history, replaced with the "College Football Playoff."  What the College Football Playoff brings us is a set of games called "The New Year's Six" -- six major bowl games (Peach, Fiesta, Orange, Cotton, Sugar, and Rose) that rotate being the two host games for the College Football Playoff Semifinals.  In this inaugural year of the College Football Playoff, the Rose Bowl (No. 3 Florida State vs. No. 2 Oregon) and Sugar Bowls (No. 4 Ohio State vs. No. 1 Alabama) have the honor of hosting the semifinals today.

But those aren't the only bowl games today.  January 1 doesn't bring us an orgy of college football bowl games anymore, but we do have five of them today, including the playoff games.

Enjoy today's bowls.  Talk about them here: this is your day's open thread.  If you want to catch up on the bowl games you have missed or check out the schedule of future bowls, just see below and click on the handy dandy scheduling tool that SB Nation has given to us.

Thu, Jan 1, 2015
12:00 PM ET ESPN2	(18) Wisconsin	vs. (Outback Bowl)	(19) Auburn
12:30 PM ET ESPN	(5) Baylor	vs. (GOODYEAR Cotton Bowl)	(8) Michigan State
1:00 PM ET ABC	(25) Minnesota	vs. (BUFFALO WILD WINGS Citrus Bowl)	(16) Missouri
5:00 PM ET ESPN	(2) Oregon	vs. (Rose Bowl PRESENTED BY NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL: playoff semifinal)	(3) Florida State
8:30 PM ET ESPN	(1) Alabama	vs. (ALLSTATE Sugar Bowl: playoff semifinal)	(4) Ohio State
Fri, Jan 2, 2015
12:00 PM ET ESPN	Houston	vs. (Armed Forces Bowl)	Pittsburgh
3:20 PM ET ESPN	Iowa	vs. (Taxslayer Bowl)	Tennessee
6:45 PM ET ESPN	(11) Kansas State	vs. (Alamo Bowl)	(14) UCLA
10:15 PM ET ESPN	Oklahoma State	vs. (Cactus Bowl)	Washington
Sat, Jan 3, 2015
12:00 PM ET ESPN	East Carolina	vs. (Birmingham Bowl)	Florida
Sun, Jan 4, 2015
9:00 PM ET ESPN	Toledo	vs. (GoDaddy Bowl)	Arkansas State
Mon, Jan 12, 2015
8:30 PM ET ESPN	TBD	vs. (National championship game)	TBD