the FOV guide to the bowl names

Well, I had plans for today's post, but they've been put on hold for now.  So I started drinking scotch while watching the Poinsettia Bowl and this is the result.  It's occurred to me that I use a lot of alternate bowl names when I'm referring to them that might not always make sense.  This is because I refuse to recognize that any such thing as the "Capital One Bowl" exists.  90% of corporate names on bowls fall into one of two categories:

-- Replaced a perfectly good, worthwhile name (Chick-Fil-A Bowl, Insight Bowl, etc.)
-- Stupid-sounding name applied to a terrible bowl (Beef O' Brady's Bowl, Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl)

(You'll notice I'm actually using the names.  For now.  Don't get used to it, it's just for reference sake.)

So here is the From Old Virginia guide to what the bowl names should be.  First off, I don't care if someone decides to put their name in front of a regular one.  Fine, do it; I don't have to worry about it.  Those are never getting said anyway except by the people who are required to.  So, here are the names I actually like:

- Alamo Bowl
- Cotton Bowl
- Fiesta Bowl
- Gator Bowl
- Holiday Bowl
- Independence Bowl
- Las Vegas Bowl
- Liberty Bowl
- Music City Bowl
- Orange Bowl
- Poinsettia Bowl
- Rose Bowl
- Sugar Bowl
- Sun Bowl

So those are cool.  A good name plays on a local feature (Sun, Orange), or uses the holidays (Poinsettia, Holiday), or otherwise rolls off the tongue nicely.  Then there are some other names I'm not philosophically opposed to, but I don't care for the sound of:

- New Mexico Bowl
- Hawaii Bowl
- New Orleans Bowl

I think it's lazy to just use the name of your place as the bowl's name.  There used to be other offenders here - the Texas Bowl, the Mobile Alabama Bowl, the Seattle Bowl, to name a few.  Fort Worth Bowl.  It's boring.  (Las Vegas Bowl is the exception, because the name "Las Vegas" alone conjures up enough of an image to make it work.)  There's got to be something more creative than "New Orleans Bowl."  For these, I suggest Trinity Bowl, Aloha Bowl, and Bourbon Bowl (like in The Waterboy) - all have local connections which shouldn't be too hard to figure out.  And for different and semi-obvious reasons, none will ever be used.  Oh well.  I'll stick with the real names on these.

Then there's:

- Pinstripe Bowl
- Armed Forces Bowl
- Military Bowl

They just don't have that right sound.  But again, not philosophically opposed to the names, so I figure, might as well use 'em.  Big Apple Bowl would sound cool, though.

Now we get to the ones I am philosophically opposed to, and won't likely use.  Here's the part that might actually be helpful.  Some of the names, I actually don't really hate:

- Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

Tell you what, let's just compromise and agree to call this the Potato Bowl.  It jibes with the idea of using local produce as the bowl name, and it's really not that different from the Citrus Bowl, which became that when the Florida Citrus Growers Association attached its sponsorship.  It sounds a little silly, but it can't be helped that potatoes aren't the awesomest things in history.  It sure sounds better than its old name, the Humanitarian Bowl.

Suggested name: Potato Bowl
Name I'll use: Potato Bowl

- Outback Bowl

This used to be the Hall of Fame Bowl, and it still doesn't sound completely horrible.  A select few of these corporate names don't.  I might slip and use it since it sort of rolls, and it's one of the older names that people are getting used to.

Suggested name: Hall of Fame Bowl
Name I'll use: sometimes Outback, sometimes Hall of Fame

Now we get into the names that are completely stupid.  Like, boycott-the-companies-til-they-take-their-name-off-our-traditions stupid.

- Beef O' Brady's Bowl St. Petersburg

OK, in some cases "traditions" might be a stretch.  I watched this last night and it was the worst football game in history.  Oh, and all the ads for Beef O' Brady's made the food look really unappetizing.  The food is supposed to look unrealistically good in the ads, not overcooked.  This is one of the newest bowls and it's played in a place that doesn't have a single distinguishing characteristic.  So I'm sort of at a loss.

Suggested name: Anything else at all
Name I'll use: St. Pete Bowl

- Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl

Mike Ilitch - the owner of Little Caesar's - has done a zillion great things in my home city, but I'm still not using his company's name on the bowl.  This was the Motor City Bowl and it ought to have stayed that way.

Suggested name: Motor City Bowl
Name I'll use: Motor City Bowl or Pizza Bowl

- Belk Bowl

Weirdly, I never hated the name "Continental Tire Bowl."  It does kind of have that roll to it and it's easy to shorten.  The bowl organizers called it the "Queen City Bowl" while they waited for a suitable sponsor, which also sounds just fine to me.

Suggested name: Queen City Bowl or Carolina Bowl
Name I'll use: Tire Bowl

- Champs Sports Bowl

This poor bowl has almost always been stuck with a corporate name - Blockbuster Bowl, Carquest Bowl, you name it.  However, for a couple glorious years it had the Tangerine Bowl moniker, which was perfect.  Bring it back, I say - it's a name with a long history.

Suggested name: Tangerine Bowl
Name I'll use: Tangerine Bowl or CS Bowl

- Insight Bowl

At least it doesn't have ".com" on it, still.  It used to be the Copper Bowl, but whoever the fuck "Insight" is, they've actually had the sponsorship on it longer than it was ever the Copper Bowl.  Still - that was a great name.

Suggest name: Copper Bowl
Name I'll use: Copper Bowl

- Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas

Man, this is a company that just needs to go the hell away.  I get why the "of Texas" - the grease monkeys need to make sure people don't confuse it with the one in Charlotte that they used to sponsor.  It still sounds retarded.  They went to "Texas Bowl" for a while, and I'm not sure why they couldn't at least have gone with Lone Star Bowl or something.  The game is in Houston, which used to host the excellent Bluebonnet Bowl; I suggest we make it happen.

Suggested name: Bluebonnet Bowl
Name I'll use: Texas Bowl

- Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl

Emerald Bowl was the former name of this one, which was a good enough name you could even forget it was actually corporate.  "Kraft Bowl" would only have sucked 90% - "Macaroni Bowl" would've been too easy, I suppose.  Anyway, Kraft decided their name alone wasn't good enough and decided to PC it up.  For that, we're taking "fight" out of the name.

Suggested name: Golden Gate Bowl
Name I'll use: Hunger Bowl

- Chick-Fil-A Bowl

Ah, here we are.  You know what this is supposed to be.

Suggested name: Peach Bowl
Name I'll use: Peach Bowl

- TicketCity Bowl

According to Wikipedia, "The game was called the Dallas Football Classic until TicketCity, an online reseller of sports and entertainment tickets, agreed to be the title sponsor."  It is a rule that any sporting event that calls itself the Something Classic is anything but classic.  It is always brand-new.  The use of the word "classic" is the most transparent attempt ever to sound better than you really are, because things that are classic don't have to say it.  I don't even know what to call it, maybe we should borrow that "Lone Star Bowl" name or something.

Suggested name: Whatever
Name I'll use: Ticket Bowl

- Capital One Bowl

Capital One annoys the shit out of me for trying to sponsor everything that college sports ever touch.  Seriously, the Capital One Cup?  Eff off.  Without the name "Citrus Bowl" we'd never have had fantastic zingers from Steve Spurrier like "you can't spell Citrus without UT."  So we're keeping that name, because it's a good one.

Suggested name: Citrus Bowl
Name I'll use: Citrus Bowl

- BBVA Compass Bowl

Fun protip: BBVA stands for Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, a Spanish bank.  When I think college football, I think "Bilbao, Spain," don't you?  This is one of several efforts to make a bowl game work in Birmingham, Alabama, which mostly all fail because of trying to put a bowl game in Birmingham, Alabama.  Always these games are at Legion Field, so "Legion Bowl" would work fine for me.

Suggested name: Legion Bowl
Name I'll use: Compass Bowl, I suppose, but because of general crappiness of bowl it'll probably always require further clarification even if I actually called it by its full Spain-inspired name.

- GoDaddy.com Bowl

What have we told you about .com?  Not only that, but GoDaddy every year has the worst Super Bowl ads history has ever seen, in that they assume that both grown men and college guys have never seen a pair of tits before and act like 12-year-olds in possession of their very first Playboy upon seeing a not-even-revealing picture of Danica Patrick.  This name is so bad it makes me wish we had "GMAC Bowl" back.

Suggested name: Nothing, because it probably just needs to disappear.  Who travels to Mobile?
Name I'll use: Danica Bowl.  Might as well.  If I ever bother referring to it.