It is easy for me to look back and remember when there were only four bowl games each season.

The Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl, and the granddaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl, were all played on Jan. 1 each year.

As you can imagine, the invitations to those four bowl games were very coveted.

This year there were four games played Dec. 20 alone. On Sunday, Southern Miss played its bowl game, followed by another game each day — excluding Christmas — until Dec. 27, when there will be three.

Another bowl game will follow on Dec. 28, then a pair Dec. 29, then three more follow Dec. 30. On New Year’s Eve there will be four games. Jan. 1, the traditional bowl game day, we will be treated to five bowl games. The Cotton Bowl, Liberty Bowl and Sugar Bowl will be played Jan. 2.

And, if that is not enough, Jan. 3, 5 and 6 will all have a bowl game. The big one, of course, being Florida against Oklahoma in Miami Jan. 8.

The Gator Bowl, Tangerine Bowl (now the Citrus Bowl) and the Liberty Bowl got in the mix pretty quickly after World War II. Shreveport’s Independence Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl followed those.

The Independence Bowl and the Tangerine Bowl, early in their histories, normally invited what are now Division II squads. Both of those bowls are now major attractions.

With so many bowl games on the calendar now, it is hard to keep up with which game is (or used to be) which. All of them now seem to have corporate sponsor names.

Before the proliferation of bowl games, there were a number of college all-star games played after each season. A college all-star team used to annually play the defending National Football League Champions in a preseason contest and quite often won that game.

There used to be a North versus South college all-star game in Miami each year, and there was the old Blue versus Gray Game in Montgomery, Ala.

About the only one left is the East versus West Shrine Game in San Francisco, Calif.

With the addition of so many bowl games, college players are busy up through the New Year holiday. Mobile’s Senior Bowl remains, but it is normally not played until well after the bowl games end.

That game, played after the NFL’s season ends, is a good opportunity for professional football coaches to scout potential players at practice and at the game.

I attended the Senior Bowl a couple times when I was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base. One of the South team’s running backs was a man who had played at Auburn. He had attended the same high school as me in Chattanooga, Tenn., but was several years behind me.

He was Fob James, who later became Governor of Alabama. His younger brother, Cal James, played with my brother Chick at Baylor, in Chattanooga, and at Georgia Tech.

Congratulations to those kids from Natchez  High, Cathedral, ACCS and Trinity who were named to their all-region teams. I hope, when the time comes for the all-metro team to be picked, the pickers will look for ability rather than simply size when picking the offensive linemen.

And, That’s Official.

Al Graning writes a weekly column for The Democrat. Contact him at alanward39157@aol.com.