The Dairy Products of the American Heartland Annual Kvetch About Bowl Game Names
The tradition continues. See previous for Why.
: I am trying to surprise my husband with a bowl trip this year but I don’t know how to communicate where we’re going. I thought we were going to the Orange Bowl, but then I looked it up and it said some sort of credit card company.
: Why yes, you need COMMON LANGUAGE!
: Language! I use it all the time! It’s a body of words—and the systems for their use—that are common to a people who are of the same linguistic community. Here’s how it works:
Words are used to convey meanings that the listener is already conditioned to understand. The words enter the ear canal and are interpreted by the brain into cognitive thoughts.
: But I’ve tried that. What if, like, some credit card company pays to replace the words for a bowl game with their name?
: Silly April, you can’t BUY language! All you have to do is use words that your listener will comprehend.
For example here’s how you refer to all of this year’s bowl games in English:
(bold are the ones where they’ve done away with the real names. All times are EST. Click each logo to get the full size. Use however you like.)
* semi-final games.
: So I’m a bit less confused, but why is the bowl in Jerryworld called the “Cotton Bowl” when the one played at the Cotton Bowl is called “Heart of Dallas”?
: I guess that’s why they added “Classic” to it, but yeah, words can’t fix everything. They can assist in communication, not guarantee clarity.
: So I can actually use these names to convey meaning to other people who speak the same language as me! Tell me, is this legal?
: Have you entered into a contract with any of the sponsors above where they pay you to replace words in your speech with their names?
: Well, no, that actually sounds kind of...
: …fizzly. Flupped even. Totally flupped beyond wizzly fizzy.
December 23rd, 2016 at 10:18 AM ^
Typically these main posts are quality stuff. This?? I'm not sure I can unsee whatever the hell this is.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:00 AM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:40 AM ^
The BBVA Compass Bowl was it for me. Although remember when they had the MagicJack bowl? I don't remember which bowl it actually was, but do remember that it was a thing.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:24 AM ^
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December 23rd, 2016 at 10:22 AM ^
IIRC the Poulan WeedEater Bowl* was my WTF?! They let anybody buy a bowl! moment.
*Independence Bowl, once upon a time.
December 23rd, 2016 at 10:35 AM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 10:45 AM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 10:50 AM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 10:56 AM ^
It's tradition (see previous), you haters. I put it out every year to bitch about ambush marketing and provide a useful table with:
- a schedule of bowl games
- a resource of non-branded logos for all the bowls
- a comprehensive list of comprehensible names for the bowls
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:02 AM ^
Still, you did it wrong. It's not the Boca Bowl, it's the The Boca Raton Wet The Beak Ponzi Scheme Awareness Bowl.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:11 AM ^
mea culpa
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:10 AM ^
I have never heard of the "Queen City" bowl. Hasn't this been the Belk Bowl for ever now?
Also: Would anyone notice if you cut off every bowl game that was created after 2002? Seriously?
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:32 AM ^
This one has some history. Queen City is a nickname for Charlotte--apparently Cincy also claims this title so I may have overestimated how ubiquitous that label is. I'm a total junky for history of the British royal family so whenever I think of Charlotte I associate it with George III's (yes THAT George) wife whom it was named for.*
But the bigger reason I'm a stickler for this name is their first two naming rights were awful. It was the Continental Tire Bowl for just 3 years and then was one of two bowls called just "Meineke Car Care Bowl".**
Belk is a local department store chain that nobody outside of Charlotte ever needs to know about. It's also the third naming rights holder and the fourth name for the bowl, which began as the Queen City Bowl.
**Its other nickname is "The Hornet's Nest" because the locals were such a pain in the ass to the British that Cornwallis had to give up on using it as a base of operations, writing home that it was "a hornet's nest of rebellion." Hence the hoops team.
**The other is the Bluebonnet, which is now called the Texas Bowl, but every old college football fan knows the bowl they play in Houston is the Bluebonnet Bowl.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:37 AM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:14 AM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:35 AM ^
I'll pull my response from my 2012 edition of this:
I'm not against branding. We do plenty of it, and I plan to do more. Sponsoring a nice thing so people can have it for free is one of the most polite ways folks have yet found to introduce themselves to customers. Marketing is subject to the same rules of propriety as all other intra-species communication. Polite: Your banner over the entrance to the guest lecture you're sponsoring. Impolite: making the lecturer interrupt his spiel to talk about the fantastic deals you're currently offering. Polite: Leaving your business card on the restaurant's bulletin board. Impolite: Renaming all the meats in the sandwiches after your products. Also impolite: naming your kid "Need School Supplies? Call 1-800-555-PENS and We'll Deliver!" so that every time the teacher does roll call you're drumming up business.
My beef is naming rights are a form of ambush marketing, and become a barrier to communication.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:42 AM ^
December 28th, 2016 at 9:22 PM ^
You might not like the tone, but it's essentially just a reminder that unless you're personally getting free Poulan Weed Eaters, you're under no obligation to refer to anything as the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl.
Case in point: My wife was driving home from Orlando tonight, and mentioned that it looked like there was a game going on at UCF because there was a blimp overhead. I told her that must have been the Russell Athletic Bowl at Camping World Stadium, and got a blank stare. When I gave in and told her it was the Tangerine Bowl, she magically knew exactly what I was talking about.
When I worked at a newspaper, it drove me crazy that other editors felt obliged to use phrases like "Russell Athletic Bowl" instead of using names that would let everyone know what we were actually talking about. Russell never paid us a dime — no bowl sponsors do — but these people would tut-tut like we'd libeled somebody if an unsponsored reference found its way into print.
Anyway, I don't hear it as a complaint. If it is, it's certainly not about sponsorship in general. And it is tradition — one I hope doesn't go away any time soon.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:15 AM ^
who has them as a major client, I only WISH we had the budget to sponsor a bowl game.
Even though I hate sponsored bowl games and participate in using only trad names.
That Maytag logo is hilariously old (there have been two redesigns since the "worms"). Enjoyed seeing how it still comes up in searches as "the" logo.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:19 AM ^
The Zaxby's Bowl transcends your naming convention. They have Chicken Fingerz, Zalads, and Zappetizers. It will alwayz be the Zaxby Bowl to me.
December 23rd, 2016 at 5:23 PM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:19 AM ^
So with the 2006 date in the chart, is that a different bowl than the one we went to in the 80's?
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:37 AM ^
Yeah, the Bluebonnet Bowl was last seen in 1987 in the Astrodome. It was sometimes in Rice Stadium. The Houston Bowl was in Reliant Stadium from 2000 to 2005. Don't know if there was anything inbetween.
1981: U-M 33, UCLA 14
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:49 AM ^
Bo's second bowl victory in a calendar year (after a decade with zero)!
That Bluebonnet Bowl was a critical juncture in Bo almost going to Texas A&M. First because Bo refused to talk about a new job until he'd beaten UCLA for "stealing" a WR recruit out of Detroit.
After the game however was the beginning of several weeks when A&M made their big recruiting move. Bo even disappeared from the locker room shortly after the game to be with the group of A&M/Cowboys/Oil Money guys who were recruiting him hardcore at the time.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:41 AM ^
Technically it is. The Bluebonnet Bowl ended in '87 and then they brought it back as the Texas Bowl (with some awful naming rights). There's three reasons I want to keep the Bluebonnet name alive:
- That bowl had some history so most college football fans should recognize it as the bowl in Houston
- There are SO MANY bowls in Texas that calling one of them the Texas Bowl is the opposite of helpful. There's one at Jerryworld, one at the Cotton Bowl, one at TCU, one in San Antonio, and then the Sun Bowl in El Paso.
- Bluebonnet Bowl is a good name.
December 23rd, 2016 at 12:31 PM ^
It wasn't the Texas Bowl until 2006.
Before it was the galleryfurniture.com (ugh), then EV1.net (double ugh) Houston Bowl.
I've heard of Meineke Car Care, but AdvoCare???
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:36 AM ^
simply because of the length of time (Outback) and the simplicity of the sponsor name (florida citrus growers), I'm assuming.
Citrus was actually known as the Tangerine for like 35 years before being sponsored as the Citrus Bowl and then adopting the name later (a real coup for the Floriday Citrus Growers).
Citrus II (or Tangerine) is really Tangerine II, right? The former Blockbuster.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:45 AM ^
Yeah. But everyone remembers it as the Citrus and then they named a second bowl the Tangerine and it got so confusing that the old names aren't any better than sponsored names.
The Outback is a special case because it might actually be an improvement on "Hall of Fame Bowl". Given the length of that deal at this point there's no use fighting it. If they called it the "Outback Steakhouse Bowl" then I'd say just go back to Hall of Fame.
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:44 AM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:59 AM ^
Some of these are way shittier than the real ones. Why is "Millitary One at TCU" better or more traditional sounding than the "Armed Forces Bowl"? Why call a bowl in St. Petersburg the Tampa Bowl?
December 23rd, 2016 at 12:11 PM ^
The Mtv Catfish bottom feeder bowl....
msu vs notre dame
December 23rd, 2016 at 12:18 PM ^
The Monty Python Teams Not-appearing-in-this-bowl Bowl
December 23rd, 2016 at 1:31 PM ^
stolen from somewhere
December 23rd, 2016 at 1:02 PM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 2:45 PM ^
December 23rd, 2016 at 3:25 PM ^
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December 24th, 2016 at 11:34 PM ^
Half of them will be by Jennifer Garner, so it's OK.
December 24th, 2016 at 11:35 PM ^
The second oldest bowl after the Rose Bowl . . . the Sun Bowl!
Who knew?
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