Bowls were created to be exhibitions. An opportunity for the sponsors to advertise, a reward to the team for a good season, and a chance for the fans to maybe travel to a nice holiday destination.
This was the view until the mid 60s, and at that point some sentiment changed and decided they should count into the polls. But the fact that the coaches' poll and the AP didn't fully switch until the early 70s, demonstrates that even then, sentiment was divided on how important the postseason was.
To this day, many coaches and teams view the bowls as meaningless exhibitions. Not the BCS/CFP, but pretty much any other bowl. Uness he was playing for the NC, Mack Brown cared very little about the bowl game he was in. He used the majority of the extra practice working on next season, and only spent a couple of days installing his gameplan for the current opponent. Lots of coaches view them that way still, and obviously the players care less and less about them each year, as the number of opt-outs skyrockets.
