College football and its fans can look forward to this year’s inaugural playoff all they want: The postseason still features more than 30 bowl games that decide absolutely nothing.

Semifinal matchups during the Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and the Northwestern Mutual Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., will decide who goes to the AT&T-sponsored championship matchup in Arlington, Texas, in January, but that leaves a whole lot of other bowls on the table.

The CapitalOne Orange Bowl in Miami will get a playoff bid in 2016, with the Vizio Fiesta Bowl hosting the championship that year, but each of those events will be saddled with playoff leftovers this year. The same goes for the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, which doesn’t get a playoff bid until 2017 and has to settle for whomever the bowl committee selects.

Still, there’s a fat paycheck in it for most collegiate athletic conferences whether teams make the playoff or not. The five major conferences — the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference — bring in roughly $50 million per conference each year through 2025. The mid-major “Group of Five” conferences — the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West and Sun Belt) pocket about $18 million apiece over that stretch. Notre Dame, just for being stubborn and entitled, gets about $4 million through 2025. That’s on top of the extra revenue each playoff bowl doles out, as well as the $6 million a year each conference gets just for putting a team in the playoffs. If a team happens to make one of those playoff-caliber bowls that isn’t hosting a playoff game, the conference gets $4 million.

“ Schools participating in bowls ate $12.1 million in unsold tickets, for an average of $173,479 in losses per team. ”

Compare that to the entire payout of the most lucrative non-playoff bowl on the slate: The Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl, which split $9 million between its participating conferences last year. From there, it’s a steep slide to the $650,000 prize offered by the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in Boise.

In an audit of the 2012-2013 college bowl season, the National Collegiate Athletic Association found that 35 bowls gave out $300.8 million to conferences, while individual schools reported spending $90.3 million on bowl trips. The NCAA report found that bowls received $445.6 million in gross receipts and spent 26% of it on operating expenses, keeping only 7% of the total. However, schools participating in bowls ate $12.1 million in unsold tickets, for an average of $173,479 in losses per team.

While that might not be so tough for big conference schools with bloated athletic revenue to absorb — especially if they’re playing in one of the deep-pocketed premier bowl games — it’s much tougher for schools with less significant sports income to cope with those costs. It’s those schools that end up playing in lower-tier regional bowls, and it’s those bowls that have to take just about any sponsor they can find to keep afloat.

The following is a sampling of the companies and other entities that slap their names on bowls when the first-, second- or even fifth-best options aren’t available.

The Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl, Dec. 26, Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Do you have an overwhelming admiration for the Winklevoss twins? Hate paying your share of taxes, sales or otherwise? Love scouring the dark Web for hitmen, drug bazaars, weapons of mass destruction or just a little paid company for the evening? Love mining highly volatile currency instead of sitting in an office?

Then you’re exactly who BitPay doesn’t want at its bowl game.

Perhaps more than any other entity in the U.S., BitPay has worked to legitimize bitcoin past its shadowy, cryptocurrency infancy into a legitimate means of payment embraced by automakers like Tesla TSLA, +0.41% , merchants including TigerDirect and Newegg and the Federal Elections Commission — which issued guidance for politicians looking to accept bitcoin donations. As the Government Accountability Office and individual states look into bitcoin’s viability as a currency, BitPay is attempting to use this low-tier bowl game as an example of how bitcoin can work more effectively, and securely, than credit or debit transactions.

After signing a two-year deal to host the bowl after former sponsor and regional restaurant and pub chain Beef O’Brady’s backed out, Bitpay slapped the bitcoin name on the bowl to promote the currency itself. As a result, bitcoin will be accepted for ticket, concession and merchandise sales for and during the game. The sponsorship itself was paid in Bitcoin, though the conferences themselves will likely be cool with cash.

The Duck Commander Independence Bowl, Dec. 27, Independence Stadium, Shreveport, La.

Consider this the pinnacle for A&E’s “Duck Dynasty.”

The hottest reality show of summer 2013 — based in nearby Monroe, La. — put camouflage children’s clothing at the local Kroger, the “Duck the Halls” Christmas album on store shelves and patriarch Phil Robertson in the national conversation for the thoughts on homosexuality and hellfire he shared with GQ around this time last year.

It just couldn’t maintain that momentum, as average viewership for the summer’s installment more than halved to 3.8 million viewers. However, that’s a solid, dedicated 4 million that’s not only still tuning in, but still adding to the Robertson family fortune initially built on duck calls. Considering this is an ACC/SEC matchup taking place right in the Robertson family’s backyard, it’s tough to blame them for throwing some of that cash at the local bowl game.

Besides, much like the Robinsons, there’s a whole lot of capital behind that middle-class facade. With roughly $2.3 million on the line, it’s still a big payday for the big conferences without the big-ticket location or prices for their fans.

The Foster Farms Bowl, Dec. 30, Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Calif.

How do you celebrate this bowl’s first year in the San Francisco 49ers’ new $1 billion home in the suburbs? By loading up on Costco chicken.

Enormous poultry producer Foster Farms basically is chicken out on the West Coast, though it has facilities located throughout the country. More specifically, it supplies Costco with the enormous packets of chicken parts in that retailer’s freezer section that end up feeding shoppers for months, if they’re lucky.

That became kind of an issue last fall, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture found antibiotic-resistant salmonella in Foster Farms chicken distributed throughout California, Oregon and Washington. The USDA issued an alert, but not before nearly 300 people got sick. Foster Farms announced over the summer that they’d cut back instances of salmonella significantly since the outbreak, but what better way to tell the country “Hey, your chicken’s not infected anymore” than getting a Pac-12 and Big 10 team together to play a second-tier Rose Bowl.

Last year, this game was known as the Fight Hunger Bowl. This year, it’s just trying to assure you that your food’s OK to eat.

The TaxSlayer Bowl, Jan. 2, Everbank Field, Jacksonville, Fla.

They’re not even trying to call this the Gator Bowl anymore.

Though the original Gator Bowl was almost completely demolished 20 years ago, this event is still run by a group called Gator Bowl Sports and is played in a stadium that still contains portions of the original Gator Bowl. But this is what happens when your sponsor signs on for an extra six years, as TaxSlayer did this year, and increases the payout from $7 million.

At least they got rid of the circa-1999 Taxslayer.com name — if not the thrash metal name of the tax and accounting software. This bowl is that particular product’s most high-profile swipe at Intuit’s better-known TurboTax and represents one of the last holdovers from the original dot-com era, with only the GoDaddy Bowl on Jan. 4 in Mobile, Ala., reminding people of those heady days when sock puppets pitched for pet websites.

Unlike that bowl, however, this one features a matchup of Big 5 conferences and a cushy, mid-afternoon, New Year’s weekend time slot. Relax, viewers: You can slay those taxes some other time.

Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl, Dec. 26, Cotton Bowl, Dallas

There hasn’t been a Cotton Bowl played in the Cotton Bowl since Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones absconded with it in 2010 after getting taxpayers to build him the giant football playground he calls AT&T Stadium.

Instead, since 2011, the Cotton Bowl has had to host this pale imitation of a bowl game. No game has been closer than two touchdowns since Texas Tech beat Northwestern 45-38 in this bowl’s first year. Last season’s attendance of fewer than 39,000 was the lowest in the event’s history as, surprisingly, few people cared about the outcome of a North Texas-UNLV matchup.

It’s been so bad that the last sponsor, PlainsCapital Bank, pulled out after just one season. That left Southeast fast-food chicken chain Zaxby’s to take up the slack. Zaxby’s, which didn’t have a Texas location until 2008. Zaxby’s, which sponsors a whole lot of SEC and ACC schools, but only two schools in Texas: Baylor and Houston. Zaxby’s, which QSR magazine ranks No. 4 among chicken chains behind Popeye’s, KFC and Chick-fil-A.

Considering the Heart of Texas Bowl’s place in this year’s pecking order behind not only JerryWorld’s national championship game, but the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, Zaxby’s actually doesn’t seem like such a bad fit.

Quick Lane Bowl, Dec. 26, Ford Field, Detroit

At one point, Detroit hosted a bowl featuring a sponsor that the average U.S. consumer could pick out of a lineup. Unfortunately, that bowl spent a lot of time being terrible.

The former Motor City Bowl was sponsored by Ford, General Motors and Chrysler from its inception in 1997 until 2007, when pre-recession bankruptcies and bailouts took Chrysler and GM out of the picture. The Little Caesars pizza chain took over in 2008, but the showcase for the Mid-Atlantic Conference champion against the Big Ten/Sun Belt/SEC/Big East/ACC team of choice became a tough sell in recent years.

After peaking with a crowd of nearly 61,000 for Purdue’s three-point win over Central Michigan in 2007, it plummeted to fewer than 24,000 for a Central Michigan/Western Kentucky matchup in 2012. When only 26,000 showed up to watch Pittsburgh play Bowling Green last year, the Detroit Lions — Ford Field’s landlord — decided they’d had enough and ditched the Pizza Bowl for this year’s Quick Lane bowl.

What’s a Quick Lane, you ask? If you don’t know, chances are you aren’t a Ford owner and haven’t had to stop into one of Ford’s branded auto shops before. No worries: That’s the whole reason bowl sponsor Ford slapped this name up there in the first place.

For the Lions and Ford Field, all that Ford money means the Pizza Bowl and its mid-major teams with minor fan bases are history. In their place are ACC and Big Ten teams with broader regional appeal and bigger draws — despite what Pitt’s showing last year may suggest. For a bowl that’s trying to ditch Detroit’s sideshow past for the big time, it’s doing a really good job of hiding its big-name sugar-daddy sponsor.

TicketCity Cactus Bowl, Jan. 2, Sun Devil Stadium, Tempe, Ariz.

Even bowl sponsors aren’t above upgrading every so often.

Ticket brokerage TicketCity once sponsored its own bowl, the TicketCity Bowl, in 2011 and 2012. Unfortunately for TicketCity, it was sponsoring the bowl now known as the Heart of Dallas bowl and had to accept the so-so matchups that went along with it. Scoring Texas Tech and Northwestern in its first year was fortuitous, but after being saddled with a Conference USA/Big Ten matchup in its second year, TicketCity dropped the sponsorship and sought something more stable.

That’s exactly what it found in Arizona, where the Cactus Bowl guarantees a Big 12 and Pac-12 matchup and a whole lot of exposure on New Year’s weekend. As for the ethics of having a ticket broker as a college bowl game sponsor, the NCAA doesn’t want to hear it. It has tickets to sell.

AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl, Dec. 29, NRG Stadium, Houston

Then again, sometimes a lateral works just as well.

From 2009 through last year, this weight-loss, sports and energy direct-sale company — the more athletic version of Avon, Amway and Mary Kay — served as the sponsor for the Independence Bowl. However, when you get the opportunity to sponsor a bowl in Texas between Big 12 and SEC teams, that’s a tough offer to pass up.

However, it isn’t one the Texas Bowl was putting on the table until recently. Last year, this same bowl couldn’t draw a league sponsor and featured cold-weather Minnesota and Syracuse (6-6 at the time) as its marquee matchup. After drawing nearly 70,000 for a New Year’s Eve matchup between Navy and Missouri back in 2009, last year’s Dec. 27 debacle managed fewer than 33,000.

This is an event that draws more than 68,000 when Baylor or Texas A&M plays, but couldn’t manage more than 50,000 during the past two years, when it, for some reason, saddled itself with Minnesota twice. Even for a company that’s only trying to market V100 “tropical chews,” that’s a tough sell.

Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl, Dec. 30, LP Field, Nashville, Tenn.

A Wednesday afternoon bowl on a day that’s not even a holiday (or a trap day between a Thursday holiday and the weekend). Boy, where can a sponsor sign up?

It doesn’t matter that this bowl is guaranteed an SEC team and will have its pick of underperforming ACC or Big Ten teams: You don’t get a sponsor like Franklin American Mortgage or a bowl name that long by putting together a big-ticket matchup. The bowl-eligible University of Tennessee would rather play in the Liberty Bowl. Even the Franklin American Mortgage Co., based in the Nashville suburb of Franklin, is basically just in this for the hometown boost.

This is how bad the Music City Bowl has it: This year, it’s forced to take whatever ACC or Big Ten team the TaxSlayer Bowl doesn’t choose. Even among the teams it invites, it’s the fall-back option. The shame of it is that the bowl games themselves typically aren’t half bad: tight scoring, lots of upsets, either Tennessee or hometown Vanderbilt appearing three times since 2008.

Yet its run of sponsors since 1998 reads as follows: American General Life & Accident, HomePoint.com, Gaylord Entertainment and now Franklin American Mortgage. We’re sure these are lovely companies, but The Bad News Bears gave Chico’s Bail Bonds more exposure than these sponsors are getting in Music City.

San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, Dec. 23, Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego

It’s not the earliest bowl — that distinction belongs to the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl on Dec. 20 — but it’s the earliest Christmas-themed bowl that San Diego has. That was the whole point back in 2005, when this bowl tried to cash in on the draw of San Diego’s Holiday Bowl, which dates to 1978.

However, that bowl is actually played on Christmas weekend and gives more than $4 million to teams from the Pac-10 and Big 12. The Poinsettia Bowl throws a poor Mountain West Conference team up against Navy in a city with an enormous naval base and hopes they’ll take $500,000 for their trouble.

If the Credit Union seems like a somewhat odd choice for a sponsor, just keep in mind that it’s held that position for nearly a decade — a minor miracle in the notoriously fickle college bowl landscape. It’s also a great representative of frugal San Diego. The city has patiently listened to the San Diego Chargers and the National Football League explain why they need to replace nearly 50-year-old Qualcomm Stadium only to reply that they’ll have to do so without San Diego tax dollars.

San Diego knows when it has a good thing going, and it doesn’t care if its San Diego County Credit Union sponsor seems a bit homespun, folksy or retrograde. It works and it pays the bills, which is about all San Diego football fans can ask for.

Postgame highlights

Our condolences to the students, players and alumni of the University of Alabama-Birmingham, who could only stand by and watch as UAB shut down its football program, becoming the first top-tier athletics program to drop its football team since the University of the Pacific in 1995. Citing the rising cost of investing in the program, including an estimated $22 million upgrade of Legion Field, the school opted to pay back future opponents for already scheduled dates and to save an estimated $49 million over the next five years. That’s bad enough news for recruits, players and students, but are reports from ESPN that the Blazers, who were eligible to go to only the second bowl game in team history, will likely be passed over only piles on the pain. Still, given the figures attached to bowl games that we laid out in the story above, UAB and its fellow Conference USA programs are going to have a far tougher time fielding teams -- never mind competing -- as a chosen few conferences tighten their grasp on college football revenue.

We heard this week that the Buffalo Bills were nixing their Toronto Series of games at Rogers Centre after this year. After Terry Pegula bought the team earlier this year, that move should surprise exactly no one. Attendance in Canada dropped from 52,000 for the first game back in 2008 to just 39,000 last year. At the same time, the NFL’s International Series in London drew 81,000 for one game at Wembley Stadium in 2007 and watched interest grow to three games drawing 83,000-plus fans a pop this season. The Wilson family that owned the Bills got what they wanted out of the deal: One less game to worry about selling out, a few more fans from Southern Ontario and increased regional value that they could work into their sale price. Pegula got what he wanted: a little leverage for a new stadium. Ultimately, the NFL got what it wanted as well: The chance to dip a toe into the Canadian market without making a huge investment. The only people this didn’t work out for were season-ticket holders at Ralph Wilson stadium, though they’re used to getting punished by a league and owners who’ll take a game off television if they don’t sit in lake-effect snow or sub-freezing temperatures in late December during a losing season.

Speaking of leverage and stealing teams, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti says his city could land an NFL team as soon as next year. It’s not that far-fetched. The Oakland Raiders have been clamoring for a new stadium, with owner Mark Davis refusing to move in with the San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara and, instead, hopping a flight to San Antonio to hear that city’s pitch. The Spanos family of owners in San Diego wants a new home for the Chargers, but that city has outright refused to pay tax dollars for it and faced multiple lawsuits for a plan that would work a stadium into the renovation budget of the city’s convention center. The most logical candidate, however, is the St. Louis Rams. The team wants a new stadium after the city foolishly agreed to a deal for a “top-tier” stadium by the end of this year: one that would require more than $700 million in upgrades to the Edward Jones Dome that neither the city nor the surrounding county has. Owner Stan Kroenke, just to prove he wasn’t bluffing, bought a stadium-sized parcel of land near the Hollywood Park racetrack and Los Angeles Forum in Inglewood, Calif., earlier this year. Keep in mind that the Los Angeles Clippers just sold for $2 billion. In an NFL where the Buffalo Bills were bought for little more than $1 billion and Forbes just put the New York Giants’ value at $2 billion, a Los Angeles NFL team would be a huge upgrade from, say, a $930 million St. Louis franchise.

Jason Notte is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Esquire. Notte received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.