Monday, January 02, 2012
I am watching the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl from Jacksonville, Flordia. I am not much of a college football fan but I generally watch some of the bowl games. This particular game features two teams who could not win more than half of their games, but I have a friend at the game and I promised her I would watch it. At this point I am watching intently on the crowd shots to see if I can spot her, and only casually watching the game. I have no idea what taxslayer.com is, and I refuse to check it out. If I do that they win. (OK, ok, they had a bunch of commercials and it looks like an online tax preparation service which in light of my complicated tax situation I might look into.)
According to Wikipedia, taxslayer is only the most recent sponsor of this game. It has previously been the Mazda Gator Bowl (do they still make cars?), the Toyota, Konica, and Progressive Gator Bowls. It seems that this year they broke tradition by leaving the car field. Bowl games are also on two other channels—the Capitol One Citrus Bowl from Orlando and the Outback Bowl from Tampa. It is a big day for college football in north Florida.
I remember when the bowl games just had the names given to them originally like the Rose, Cotton, and Orange Bowls. In those days we had things like the Liberty Bowl, the Sugar Bowl (which actually made some sense since you put sugar in a bowl) and the Bluebonnet Bowl (which also made sense because Bluebonnet was a margarine.) But somewhere along the line bowl games became like sports stadiums, just another way for big corporations to advertise. This has led to some absurd monikers.
After all, Outback is an Australian steakhouse. There is no connection between it and college football. I might be in favor of an Outback Bowl if they were playing Australian rules football. And Capitol One? They have all those commercials with what I guess are supposed to be Vikings racking up double miles. Should their bowl give double points to touchdowns? Or only have players drafted by the Minnesota Vikings? They probably charged a $5 surcharge on your ticket if you used your debit card to buy it.
But these are not the most egregious examples of this name absurdity. How about the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl? They only way Kraft wants to fight hunger is to sell you more boxes of macaroni and cheese. They probably think this makes them seem like a good corporate citizen. Just using the products which endorse bowl games you could fight hunger. There is the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl because what is a fiesta without corn chips? The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, because if they called it the Infamous Idaho Potato Bowl nobody would watch (or maybe a lot more WWE fans would tune in). America’s favorite football food has the Little Ceaser’s Bowl. The battle of the barnyard continues: those cows on the billboards will want you to watch more football in the Chick-fil-a Bowl (and please do not get me started on cutesy misspellings), but they will frown upon the commercial success of the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl. I am not making this up. I have never eaten at or even seen or even know what Beef ‘O’ Brady’s is, but Marshall beat Florida International in their game.
Strangely, Hyundai is the only car company to sponsor a bowl this year, but cars must be falling apart because Meineke Car Care, Auto Zone, and Maaco sponsor games. And we crash them a lot, resulting in the Allstate Sugar Bowl and the Allstate BCS championship game.
Some of the bowls are sponsored by companies I never heard of. There is a Belk Bowl, an Advocare V100 Bowl, a Gildan Bowl, and an R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. The Occupy Wall Street people will be distressed to find out that both BBVA Compass and Compass join Capitol One in having bowls (unless, like the World Series, they find a way to separate out support for corporations from cheering on their alma mater). They would be pleased, however, by the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl (great game, but only on local tv).
War hawks will be encouraged that we have the Military Bowl presented by Northrop Grumman and the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. (Do they really think putting their name on a bowl will spur sales of helicopters?)
Godaddy.com has a bowl, where I am sure Danica Patrick is handling the coin toss, probably wearing a bikini. AT&T sponsors the Cotton Bowl where if the game is played consistent with my cell service there will be a lot of dropped balls.
If you think these names are ridiculous you can always look back. We used to have a Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl; a Roady’s Truck Stops Humanitarian Bowl (have you ever thought of truck stops as meeting places for great humanitarians?); and a magicJack Bowl.
Oh for the good old days. Prior to corporate names we had some truly creative bowl names and local tie-ins: the Bacardi Bowl from Havana (don’t you think that was fun to attend?), a Boot Hill Bowl in Dodge City, Kansas (don’t ask what happened to the losers); the Cigar Bowl (you can imagine that the winning coach was given a victory stogie); the Mercy Bowl (where if one team got too big a lead they stopped it early); the Oil Bowl (extra long cleats required); and the most sensible name of all-time, the Salad Bowl.
I like it. From now on they should not allow any game to be called a bowl game unless the thing can actually be put in a bowl. Otherwise it should be called something else, like the Allstate Deny Liability game or the Outback Serving Platter contest, or the Chick-fil-a Styrofoam container game.
According to Wikipedia, taxslayer is only the most recent sponsor of this game. It has previously been the Mazda Gator Bowl (do they still make cars?), the Toyota, Konica, and Progressive Gator Bowls. It seems that this year they broke tradition by leaving the car field. Bowl games are also on two other channels—the Capitol One Citrus Bowl from Orlando and the Outback Bowl from Tampa. It is a big day for college football in north Florida.
I remember when the bowl games just had the names given to them originally like the Rose, Cotton, and Orange Bowls. In those days we had things like the Liberty Bowl, the Sugar Bowl (which actually made some sense since you put sugar in a bowl) and the Bluebonnet Bowl (which also made sense because Bluebonnet was a margarine.) But somewhere along the line bowl games became like sports stadiums, just another way for big corporations to advertise. This has led to some absurd monikers.
After all, Outback is an Australian steakhouse. There is no connection between it and college football. I might be in favor of an Outback Bowl if they were playing Australian rules football. And Capitol One? They have all those commercials with what I guess are supposed to be Vikings racking up double miles. Should their bowl give double points to touchdowns? Or only have players drafted by the Minnesota Vikings? They probably charged a $5 surcharge on your ticket if you used your debit card to buy it.
But these are not the most egregious examples of this name absurdity. How about the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl? They only way Kraft wants to fight hunger is to sell you more boxes of macaroni and cheese. They probably think this makes them seem like a good corporate citizen. Just using the products which endorse bowl games you could fight hunger. There is the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl because what is a fiesta without corn chips? The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, because if they called it the Infamous Idaho Potato Bowl nobody would watch (or maybe a lot more WWE fans would tune in). America’s favorite football food has the Little Ceaser’s Bowl. The battle of the barnyard continues: those cows on the billboards will want you to watch more football in the Chick-fil-a Bowl (and please do not get me started on cutesy misspellings), but they will frown upon the commercial success of the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl. I am not making this up. I have never eaten at or even seen or even know what Beef ‘O’ Brady’s is, but Marshall beat Florida International in their game.
Strangely, Hyundai is the only car company to sponsor a bowl this year, but cars must be falling apart because Meineke Car Care, Auto Zone, and Maaco sponsor games. And we crash them a lot, resulting in the Allstate Sugar Bowl and the Allstate BCS championship game.
Some of the bowls are sponsored by companies I never heard of. There is a Belk Bowl, an Advocare V100 Bowl, a Gildan Bowl, and an R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. The Occupy Wall Street people will be distressed to find out that both BBVA Compass and Compass join Capitol One in having bowls (unless, like the World Series, they find a way to separate out support for corporations from cheering on their alma mater). They would be pleased, however, by the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl (great game, but only on local tv).
War hawks will be encouraged that we have the Military Bowl presented by Northrop Grumman and the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. (Do they really think putting their name on a bowl will spur sales of helicopters?)
Godaddy.com has a bowl, where I am sure Danica Patrick is handling the coin toss, probably wearing a bikini. AT&T sponsors the Cotton Bowl where if the game is played consistent with my cell service there will be a lot of dropped balls.
If you think these names are ridiculous you can always look back. We used to have a Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl; a Roady’s Truck Stops Humanitarian Bowl (have you ever thought of truck stops as meeting places for great humanitarians?); and a magicJack Bowl.
Oh for the good old days. Prior to corporate names we had some truly creative bowl names and local tie-ins: the Bacardi Bowl from Havana (don’t you think that was fun to attend?), a Boot Hill Bowl in Dodge City, Kansas (don’t ask what happened to the losers); the Cigar Bowl (you can imagine that the winning coach was given a victory stogie); the Mercy Bowl (where if one team got too big a lead they stopped it early); the Oil Bowl (extra long cleats required); and the most sensible name of all-time, the Salad Bowl.
I like it. From now on they should not allow any game to be called a bowl game unless the thing can actually be put in a bowl. Otherwise it should be called something else, like the Allstate Deny Liability game or the Outback Serving Platter contest, or the Chick-fil-a Styrofoam container game.
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