The addition of three more college football bowl games might suggest that the bowl business is booming, but the odds of survival for the bottom-tier bowls -- following Thursday's announcement -- might have gotten worse.

Thanks to the recent lifting of a two-year bowl moratorium that kept the number of games fixed at 26, the NCAA Football Certification Committee was able to approve new bowl games -- the Hawaii Bowl, the Queen City Bowl (Charlotte) and the San Francisco Bowl.

Making room is easy. There will now be 28 games, and therefore 56 of 117 Division I-A schools will play in a postseason game. Using the new formula, where 6-6 teams are now eligible, 62 schools would have been eligible to play a game last year. A team that is 5-6 against Division I-A teams, but has a win against a Division I-AA team, will be able to use that win to qualify for a bowl. That 6-6 bowl provision only applies to the 2002-03 season.

Who's in charge here?

At issue this week in San Antonio, where the College Bowl Association meetings took place, was the unilateral decision by the NCAA’s board of directors last week to allow 6-6 teams to play in bowl games. Since the bowl games are organized by the individual bowl committees and the NCAA member schools -- but not arranged by the NCAA itself -- many executive directors of the bowls questioned the NCAA's decision. "Our resolution from the Bowl Association two years ago was very strong that teams that are awarded with bowls should have a winning season," said Steve Ehrhart, executive director of the AXA Liberty Bowl. "There was no consultation at all with the bowls and they pretty much told us the news through press releases. It somewhat devalues the whole concept of going to a bowl and catching that rainbow at the end of the year." Tim Curley, Penn State athletics director and chair of the Football Certification Committee, said that the 6-6 decision was made to make sure there were enough eligible teams in an expanded bowl format. It also helps accommodate the 12-game schedules that schools will play in 2002 and 2003. -- Darren Rovell

But making sure that lower-tier bowls sign title sponsors and that bowl-eligible borderline teams can fiscally afford playing in the game is another story.

Although some bowl title sponsorship comes from local area businesses, several bowls are expected to compete for the wooing of national companies in a tough economic environment.

"We could probably survive without a title sponsor if we had to,” said Tom Mickle, executive director of the Capital One Florida Citrus Bowl and the Tangerine Bowl. Two weeks ago, the Florida Citrus Commission ended its 19-year co-sponsorship of the Citrus Bowl. Mickle said he will know in 60 days whether the bowl's other co-sponsor Capital One wants to become the sole title sponsor.

"There are other bowls, however, that I don't think can afford to go without a title sponsorship,” Mickle said.

At least eight of the 25 bowls played last year -- including the Seattle Bowl, Holiday Bowl and Alamo Bowl -- do not currently have title or presenting sponsors. Even AT&T, which was the presenting sponsor of the Rose Bowl, dropped its sponsorship of the game three weeks ago.

"We have a large market down here in Houston,” said Jerry Ippoliti, president and CEO of the Houston Bowl, which lost its title sponsor for two years, Gallery Furniture, in February. "But some of the other bowls that are not in major metropolitan areas may be forced to go out and hire a national agency to help them out.”

But hiring a national agency might defeat the purpose of the title sponsorship.

"To date, all bowl games have been able to make their payments. Some of them can do it without title sponsorship, some of them have to have it," said Tim Curley, Penn State athletics director and chair of the Football Certification Committee.

If some bowls can't make end meets on the sponsorship or the standard ticket requirements -- which force participating schools to buy a block of tickets sometimes at a loss -- struggling bowls might force participating schools to purchase a corporate sponsorship, as the Crucial.com Humanitarian Bowl did last year.

In addition to buying the usual allotment of tickets, the bowl asked potential participant UCLA to front $350,000 for a sponsorship. After projecting a total loss of $300,000 if the school were to play in the bowl, UCLA denied the bid.

"Ideally we would like to have the bowls not ask participating teams to be part of their financial equation like this," Curley said. "If they have to do so, they might have to drop out."

Fitting 28 games into 18 days is another challenge, but luckily the business of bowl broadcasts is a good one.

Last year, the average bowl game audience on ESPN was 2.69 million households and 1.2 million households on ESPN2. Twelve games were shown on ESPN and three on ESPN 2. By contrast, the first two games of the Stanley Cup on ESPN last year, averaged 1.58 million households.

But despite the fact television ratings should be solid, no one is really quite sure what to expect.

"It's not going to go from 28 to 32 to 35 bowl games," Curley said. "Some of the new bowls might work, some of them might not. We're just trying to find a natural landing spot. No one can read the crystal ball and tell us how the economics of being in this environment are going to play out."

Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn.com.