Success is not measured the same way for every team in college football. While every program may claim that winning the national championship is the goal every season, that is realistically not the case.
For some programs, just six wins and securing a bowl game appearance is a major accomplishment. A bowl game bid is something that can be extremely beneficial, especially for lower-tier programs, in terms of money and recruiting. While six wins may not seem like a lot, and is not even a “winning season”, it is still an impressive accomplishment in college football.
Last season, several teams snapped long bowl droughts, including Nebraska (7 years), Colorado State (6 years), and Vanderbilt (5 years), while a select few will be aiming to do the same this year. Here are the current longest bowl game droughts in college football prior to the 2025 season.
It has been a hard fall from grace that started with an ugly end of the David Shaw era at Stanford. The Cardinal have the longest active bowl drought of any Power Four program with their last appearance coming in the 2018 Sun Bowl. That actually ended a 10-year streak of bowl appearances with five of those being New Year’s Six bowl games. While this year may not look bright after the mid-March firing of their head coach, there is hope for the future of this program with Andrew Luck now at the helm as Stanford's GM, and I expect this streak to be broken in the near future.
Akron is a program that is just lost and has been stuck as the bottom feeder of the MAC in recent years. Their last bowl appearance came in 2017 at the Boca Raton Bowl where they lost to FAU by 47 points. Since that game, the Zips have a record of 15-63 with a third of those wins being against FCS programs. We know this streak will not be broken this year, as Akron has already been deemed ineligible for a bowl game due to a low Academic Progress Rate, the first time a team has achieved this feat since 2014.
The Lobos last four bowl game appearances have been in the New Mexico Bowl with their last one coming in 2016 under head coach Bob Davie. They are now led by Jason Eck who has had great success at the FCS level as a head coach at Idaho and offensive coordinator at South Dakota State. Last season looked like the year they could break the streak, with Bronco Mendenhall (now at Utah State) as head coach and Devon Dampier (now at Utah) at quarterback, but fell just short with a 5-7 record.
UL-Monroe’s last and only bowl game appearance since joining the FBS in 1994 came in 2012, when the Warhawks played in the Independence Bowl. Despite reaching six wins in both 2013 and 2018, ULM did not receive bowl invitations in those years due to there being more eligible teams than bowl game spots. Since 2012, the Warhawks have accumulated a 46-97 record. Last season, they looked poised to break the six-win barrier and end this drought after winning five of their first six games, but ended up dropping six straight to end the season and finishing at 5-7.
It is no secret that UMass has been the worst program in the FBS since joining in 2012. In their 13 seasons at the FBS level, they have yet to make a bowl game and have had eight seasons with two wins or less. In 2025, the Minutemen will be led by new head coach Joe Harasymiak as they rejoin the MAC; a move they hope will help make history and end this drought.