''Bowl Bound'' was a

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

originally marketed in

1973 Events January * January 1 - The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union. * January 15 – Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, U.S. ...

Time Inc. Time Inc. was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden and based in New York City. It owned and published over 100 magazine brands, including its namesake ''Time'', ''Sports Illu ...

, owner of Sports Illustrated Magazine. It was part of a line of sports games sold under the SI umbrella. In 1978, rights to the games and time-limited use of the "Sports Illustrated Game" banner were sold to

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

-based

Avalon Hill Avalon Hill Games Inc. is a game company that publishes wargames and strategic board games. It has also published miniature wargaming rules, role-playing games and sports simulations. It is a subsidiary of Hasbro, and operates under the company' ...

. The game allowed 32 select

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

I-A teams from 1960 to 1970, including a few

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

squads, to be pitted against one other. For each team,

statistical Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...

grids based on actual, specific team strengths balanced nine offensive plays against six defensive formations. There were weighted

probabilities Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speaking, ...

were expressed by offensive (216 outcomes) and defensive (36 outcomes)

dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing g ...

rolls for simplified but statistically informed results. Two additional team sets of 20 teams apiece, dating between 1940 through 1978 and 1979 through 1988 respectively, were sold before the rise of computerized sports led to the game's discontinuation in the 1990s. Updated Bowl Bound charts for the most recently completed seasons (1966-2009) are available at maysfootball.com. Updated charts are also available for Paydirt. An

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

version, '' Paydirt'', was marketed annually by

for decades.

External links

* * http://www.nascarmodelkits.com/boardgames.html - Learn more about the history of these great football games. Avalon Hill games Board games introduced in 1973 Sports board games {{board-game-stub