Wait, aren’t these supposed to be New Year’s Day?

The Cotton Bowl and the Orange Bowl are both being played on January 3rd? For about a thousand years New Year’s Day had the Cotton, the Rose, the Sugar and the Orange bowls. Now they string them out, which is nice for the casual TV fan, I guess, but sort of bollixes up tradition. Not that the NCAA nor ESPN and the broadcast networks give a single rip about that.