GELFAND ON … THE BUSINESS OF SPORTS-OK, I'm kidding. There is no such postseason college football game with that name. Actually, there are 3, each taking one part of the wording. There is, I swear, a Russell Athletic Bowl, and according to ESPN prognosticators, we are likely to see Louisville (I thought that was a baseball bat) play Virginia Tech. Notre Dame and Michigan would be quivering in their boots. I'll leave it to you to fill in your own joke about the people who make the Athletic Bowl a reality.
Back in the old days, there were four bowl games. They were a big deal, and you could count them off on game day, which was January 1 unless that happened to be a Sunday. Rose, Cotton, Sugar, Orange. Each was named after an agricultural product signifying regional pride, and in each case the game fielded two of the top teams in the country. Generally, the national champion would be the winner of one of these games, except in the years when Notre Dame went undefeated and untied.
That's because for a long time, Notre Dame did not accept bowl invitations. The administration thought that this went against their educational and religious purposes. You can look back at the records and find Notre Dame teams that went 9-0 , did not play in a bowl game, and won it all. It seems to have been a more innocent time.
In recent years, there has been an explosion in the creation of bowl games. There are teams getting bowl invitations that in previous eras would have spent the offseason wearing paper bags over their heads. Back in the good old days, a team finishing 8-4 was considered OK, maybe even pretty good. That's 4 losses, and let's see if they get better next year. But in something called the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, Colorado State, a team with an even worse record at 7-6 (turn one of those wins into a loss and you have a losing record) faces 8-4 Buffalo. What's worse, Buffalo plays in the Mid America Conference instead of the Big 12, because if its conference membership were switched, we could be seeing Buffalo play in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl.
Now I have nothing against Buffalo Wild Wings, which happens to be a chain which sells fried chicken parts and cold drinks. I much enjoyed their hospitality one night in Beaver Creek, Ohio. I just kind of flinch at the idea of naming a significant athletic contest after a part of the chicken. I suppose it could be worse. They might have chosen a different organ for the naming rights.
Just to be serious for a second, what we are talking about here, of course, is the commercialization of all things sacred or profane. At one time, the Rose Bowl was a very big deal. Some of us remember when Ohio State and USC went nose to nose for three straight years in the 1970s. It's hard to imagine Woody Hayes or John McKay taking a 7-6 team to the Smith Brothers Cough Drop Football Classic. I'd like to think that those guys had some pride.
The real game is, of course, the chance for television to insert corporate names into every possible aspect of the broadcast, starting with the identification of the game. I'm not talking about the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl. Let them have their fun, whoever is going to play there. But when the more serious stuff happens, it's a little sad to have the Cotton Bowl now presented to us as the AT&T Cotton Bowl. Maybe if the sponsor could get my internet email to work, I wouldn't be so irritated, but the name Cotton Bowl once carried pride and grandeur.
There is something called the Discover Orange Bowl. We may presume that this refers to the once august Orange Bowl, proud host of national championship games, but who's to know? There's also the Allstate Sugar and the GoDaddy Bowl.
The Rose Bowl held the line for years, refusing to sell its soul, but it has gone so far as to become the Rose Bowl Game Presented by VIZIO. I'm not trying to be sarcastic by putting VIZIO all in caps. That's the way the ESPN website presents it.
In truth, while fact checking this little discussion, I discovered something weird. It turns out that there has been another bowl game all along (or at least since 1935), called the Sun Bowl. It came into existence a mere 33 years after the Rose Bowl, but at the same time as the Orange and Sugar Bowls. But I challenge anybody to name the teams that played there in 1954 or 2003. By the way, it's now the Hyundai Sun Bowl. I wonder if the overseas ownership understands what they are buying. Or even where.
It turns out the most flat-out ridiculous sounding game is right near home. Prepare yourselves for this one:
The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl.
Here is the description, so help me Knute: It's in San Diego at a stadium named for a major corporation starting with a Q, and it hosts the second place team from the Mountain West Conference going against Army, provided Army finishes with bowl eligibility. In the modern era, bowl eligibility requires only that you finish not-a-loser. A 6-6 record is enough. Army appears to have finished at 3-8. No cigar. If only 3 of those defeats had been victories, they'd be Bowl Eligible. So close.
So the SDCCUPBowl will possibly feature (ESPN forecasters here again) Oregon State vs. Utah State or Toledo vs. Boise State. Oregon State managed to finish at six and six, so they're bowl eligible. Utah State gets to play in the conference championship, but if they lose that game, they will win the right to play in the SDCCUPBowl. (Stealing from Dave Barry again: I'm not making this up.) Their record, should that transpire, will be 8-5. I guess there aren't enough paper bags in Utah.
There are actually a couple of amusing bowl names. Who could resist the Beef 'O' Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl. And the bowl will be served with Rice if that dignified technical university happens to get the bid. There's the BBVA Compass Bowl, whatever BBVA stands for. I think it's a bank. But for the best overall name, because it actually creates a comprehensible phrase, we have the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Add a little salsa and it's a meal.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for City Watch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 98
Pub: Dec 6, 2013
