As the college football regular season wraps up and the joy of the holiday season approaches, so too does the grossly over-advertised and overpopulated bowl season.
Gone are the days of football fans actually being able to remember the entire name of the bowls their teams are playing in.
These days the Peach Bowl can no longer just be the Peach Bowl. It wasn’t enough for Chick-fil-A to simply be the title sponsor, making this bowl the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl – no, this company and the directors of the bowl took it a step further.
This year, after Chick-fil-A reached even deeper into its wallet, the bowl will now be named the Chick-fil-A Bowl. Yes, this company did originate in Georgia and the game is in Georgia, but which one do you associate with the state – fast food or a peach? I’ll take the fruit.
Also, I’m pretty sure the bowl organizers in Florida lost their minds. The Tangerine and Citrus bowls, things easily associated with the state, are now the Champs Sports Bowl and the Capital One Bowl, respectively.
The Humanitarian Bowl, a classic name for a football game, is now the MPC Computers Bowl. This bowl is in Idaho, and quite frankly, I see no association between a computer, the state and the game. This game is played on a blue turf field, so what, does MPC make blue computers?
This overtaking of bowl names by sponsors is only one of the problems. Some bowl organizers don’t think one title sponsor is enough. They take it a step further getting tons of money from another sponsor and adding “presented by” after “bowl” to cram in two sponsors’ names.
Here are some examples, but let me warn you- these names might take a couple breaths to get through: Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl presented by Bridgestone and the Rose Bowl Game presented by Citi.
Then, there are the companies with ridiculously long names that decide to sponsor bowl games, and for some reason, people let them do this. We now have the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, the Pioneer PureVision Las Vegas Bowl and the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. Are we serious, people? Is this necessary?
Also, gone are the days when it meant something for a team to play in a bowl.
This season, a record 32 bowl games have been licensed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, up from an already mind-numbing 28 bowls last year.
The Big East Conference, not exactly a powerhouse, has had all eight of its teams playing in a bowl game over the last two years. Why should teams who finish in the last half of their conference get rewarded with an extra game and the financial reward that comes along with it?
As a whole, our society has pushed the limit of advertising and challenged the notion of competition in athletics. We think every child should get to play and have a sponsor’s name on his back.
This is just an idea, but I’m pretty sure it would work: let’s help further the “everybody-gets-to-play” movement in society and match the two worst teams in college football. We could call it the Great John Toilet Bowl presented by the ShitBeGone Toilet Paper Co.