New games in Austin, Orlando, Tucson mean 42 college football bowls

Bowl games are great business investments. You could gather this from their annual outperformance of actual meaningful college basketball games in the TV ratings. Or you could just note how many of the things keep popping up around the country.

"Tucson and Little Rock expect to apply for new bowls ... in 2015," ESPN's Brett McMurphy reported. The former would pair Conference USA and the Mountain West, and the latter the American and Sun Belt. [Update: McMurphy later reported that a game in Austin, Texas between the American and Conference USA has applied as well.]

Counting the College Football Playoff National Championship, that would be 43 bowl games, with no sign of slowing down. Orlando's Cure Bowl is also expected to begin in 2015. In 2014, new games emerged in the Bahamas, Boca Raton, Miami Beach, and Montgomery, Ala. We went to the Bahamas Bowl. It was wonderful.

Update: McMurphy reports the NCAA has certified the games in Austin, Orlando and Tucson, but not Little Rock. So it's 42 bowls in 2015.

Little Rock has been angling for a bowl for years now. At one point, it was expected to be named the Rice Bowl and pit the MAC vs. the Sun Belt.

The Copper Bowl, now the Cactus Bowl, was once held in Tucson. Little Rock hosted the Aluminum Bowl, an NAIA game, in 1956.

BUT WAIT! There's more.

Pac-12 had exploratory talks about adding bowl in Melbourne, Australia, but now targeting 2016

— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) March 30, 2015