So I fell a bit behind on the bowl previews. A combination of family commitments, travel, sickness and wonky unreliable internet caused be to just stop writing them. When I was writing them, the Locale, Bowl Pedigree and Corporate Nonsense sections were quite entertaining and well received. Thus, I give them to you my readers for all of the bowl games I didn't cover. Note the BCS games and the Cotton Bowl are not covered. Those game are all high pedigree and high locale with necessary and unobtrusive corporate sponsors. There was nothing interesting to say about them.
Bowl Game: Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl
Locale/Bowl Pedigree: One of three games in the Dallas-Fort Worth area makes this one ripe for the killing whenever we decide to finally kill some bowl games. Also, that this one is played on either SMU or TCU's campus doesn't exactly help matters. It looks small time, it feels small time and it is small time.
Corporate Nonsense: At least this game has a sponsor that fits. Also, it is a sponsor that doesn't usurp its bowl partner like so many others (some of which will be skewered a bit further down this post).
Bowl Game: New Era Pinstripe Bowl
Locale/Bowl Pedigree: This game is played a Yankee Stadium. It connects with the tradition of big games played at Yankee Stadium in the olden days. A nice throw back... Or maybe not. This game is played at New Yankee Stadium. That alone is worth -10,000 points. Add in that the game hosts a mediocre Big East team and an even more mediocre Big 12 team and there is a recipe for disaster, even if the first one last year was good.
Corporate Nonsense: Another sponsor that fits, especially as a hat maker sponsoring a game played in a baseball stadium. This could get boring quick if we don't get some absurd sponsors (and we will soon).
Bowl Game: Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl
Locale/Bowl Pedigree: The stadium in Nashville is nice. Nashville itself is nice. Nothing more to say about the ho humness here. Even the pedigree is ho hum. At various points in this game's history, it has hosted mediocre Big East, ACC, Big Ten and SEC teams. Right now its ACC/SEC, probably the best combination possible for itself, even if the matchups sometimes are dull.
Corporate Nonsense: And here we have a pointless sponsor. Franklin American Mortgage and Music City just go so well together don't they. Why can't this game get a record company or something along those lines to sponsor this. At least if going off the board, do what this game used to do and go totally off the board. By totally off the board I mean bring back Gaylord Hotels as the title sponsor. The laugher and snickers that used to be had at this game's expense at least used to mean everyone knew what it was. Now, it's just a soulless corporate nothing of a game.
Bowl Game: Insight Bowl
Locale/Bowl Pedigree: Not bad, all things considered. This game actually has a history over 20 years, going back to its beginnings as the Copper Bowl. It survived being a .com bowl game (unlike most every other one) and it is now played at Sun Devil Stadium, a site where national titles have been decided and great games have been played (by the big brother Fiesta Bowl that moved to the new stadium in Glendale). Even the matchup is normally decent, hosting the Big Ten and Big 12 in a game that normally has a team in the back end of the top 25.
Corporate Nonsense: I don't know what the heck Insight does, but as the sole corporate sponsor since 1997 and having survived a few years as the Insight.com bowl, nobody remembers that this game used to be the Copper Bowl. Given that, this sponsor gets a passing grade for staying with it so long that the corporate sponsor has become the bowl and has had a long enough tenure to be accepted.
Bowl Game: Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas
Locale/Bowl Pedigree: My first order as commissioner of college football would be to kill this game off in swift fashion. It is an abomination. Other than the fact that it has already died and been revived once and is a corporate monstrosity of failure (more on that below), it has awful matchups annually. For example, I have no idea why anyone thought either Illinois last year or Northwestern this year was a good idea, but here we are. Let it also be noted that the tv broadcast of the 2006 game is considered one of the worst bowl broadcasts of all-time (thanks NFL Network). That year, the sideline reporter just didn't bother coming to the game (that would be Marshall Faulk), the yellow first down line malfunctioned during the telecast and the play by play guy kept channeling his inner Elmer Fudd during the game, calling Rutgers RB Ray Rice Way Wice.
Corporate Nonsense: Incarnation one: two years as the galleryfurniture.com Bowl. A few years as the EV1.net Houston Bowl. If you can tell me why Houston based Gallery Furniture would need to sponsor a national bowl game about its website, gold star for you. If you can tell me what EV1.net does, many more gold starts for you. Incarnation two: the Houston Texans of the NFL sponsored the game, calling it the Texas Bowl. Then came idiocy this year. That would be the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas. Normally that wouldn't be too insane except the of Texas is necessary because the Meineke Car Care Bowl was played in Charlotte the last few seasons. That game is now the Belk Bowl (ugh) while this abomination of a game gets Meineke Car Care.
Bowl Game: Hyundai Sun Bowl
Locale/Bowl Pedigree: I'll be quick. The bowl has a lot of history and has had tv coverage by CBS for a long time. The locale sucks. Who the heck wants to spend New Year's in El Paso, Texas?
Corporate Nonsense: Nothing out of the ordinary here. Car makers have been reliable sponsors of games for a long time and will likely be solid sponsors for many years to come.
Bowl Game: AutoZone Liberty Bowl
Locale/Pedigree: Memphis is a nice town (ok city for those who might get bent out of shape over me calling it a town when it is much bigger than that). The stadium is a falling apart, dilapidated dump that Memphis University refuses to fix despite the place being its home field and that the bowl refuses to fix because it's Memphis' home field. The Liberty Bowl name came with the game when it moved from Philadelphia to Atlantic City and then Memphis in 1965.
Corporate Nonsense: Nothing terrible. AutoZone is a national chain based in Memphis. There is no real corporate tie-in, but sometimes there doesn't have to be. As long as we aren't dealing with the AutoZone Bowl in the future, its ok if there must be a corporate sponsor.
Bowl Game: Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl
Locale/Pedigree: Pathetic. It's a game played in a baseball stadium between usually bad football teams (2010 exempted when 12-1 Nevada was in the game). If you learned nothing from the Pinstripe Bowl, learn it again here: don't play football in baseball stadiums. If you must, get a better matchup.
Corporate Nonsense: The Kraft Fight Hunger Initiative is nice. Nothing bad to say about a corporate sponsor using a bowl for a good cause. Of course this game has its checkered stupidity in sponsorship previously. Most notably, it carried the ridiculous Diamond Walnut San Francisco Bowl name for a couple of years. After that, it became the Emerald Bowl (still the same sponsor) and was notable for giving us the first national airing of this before it aired during the Super Bowl:
Bowl Game: Chick-fil-A Bowl
Locale/Pedigree: This is a first class bowl game in a first class stadium. It gets a good SEC team against a good ACC team every year and it has the longest sell out streak of any bowl game (that includes the BCS games, even the Rose that failed to sell out in 2002) owing that streak to being in the mecca of college football and having huge alumni bases for nearly every school that gets to play in it. If not for the miserable New Year's Eve night time slot (unless I am there, I refuse to watch my Auburn team play in this game again), this might be my non-BCS Bowl game.
Corporate Nonsense: Of course there has to be one drawback. That is here. Chick-fil-A is a great sponsor. It is a good company. This game is still the Peach Bowl. I refuse to acknowledge it otherwise except in posts like this one.
Bowl Game: TicketCity Bowl
Locale/Pedigree: Let's just call this what it is: Zombie Cotton Bowl. It is played in the Cotton Bowl stadium. It is played in the Cotton Bowl's former New Year's morning timeslot. It has had a former Southwest Conference team in the game in each of the first two incarnations (Texas Tech last season and Houston this season). Of course all of that doesn't make this game worthwhile, even if it got a plum matchup this season (only happened because of some Conference USA finagling and the Jerry Sandusky scandal that sent Penn St. sliding down the pecking order in the Big Ten). Let it be noted that this is the only game relegated to the ghetto known as ESPNU for tv coverage. Every other game except one is on either ESPN or network tv (and that one is on ESPN2 at the same time this game is on).
Corporate Nonsense: And the Zombie Cotton Bowl has an appropriate sponsor too: the poorman's StubHub. TicketCity just isn't as good as its inspiration at StubHub. In the same way, the Zombie Cotton Bowl will never be as good as the real Cotton Bowl.
Bowl Game: Outback Bowl
Locale/Pedigree: The former Hall of Fame Game has had a nice SEC/Big Ten matchup for as long as I can remember. Looking at the history, it hosted Duke in the Blue Devils final bowl appearance in the last year before the SEC/Big Ten contract kicked in. Also, Tampa is a good bowl site too (at opposed to that abomination across the bay in St. Petersburg known as the Beef O Brady's Bowl).
Corporate Nonsense: Outback Steakhouse has been sponsoring this game for longer than I can remember there being an Outback Steakhouse. That's how we want all of our corporate sponsors to be. If we must have them, do a good job of integrating the company into the game. One way to do that is longevity.
Bowl Game: Capital One Bowl
Locale/Pedigree: The locale is the same as the Champs Sports Bowl. Thus, it is pretty good. The pedigree is much better than its cousin. SEC 2 against Big Ten 2 is much better than ACC 3 against Big East 2 (even when Notre Dame replaces Big East 2).
Corporate Nonsense: Ugh. See Chick-fil-A Bowl comments. Repeat, replacing Chick-fil-A with Capital One and Peach with Citrus.
Bowl Game: Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl
Locale/Pedigree: The most hated upon decent city in the country. Jacksonville isn't bad, it just isn't what anyone wants (except for during World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party week). Thus, this game has lost its luster after being a marquee game for many years. The start of its slide certainly started with the decision to get away from the Big East and ACC. It did well before that. Now, it is an awful game making up the pathetic end of the New Year's SEC/Big Ten Challenge while the Outback and Citrus Bowls do the heavy lifting.
Corporate Nonsense: A .com bowl game? You're dead to me Gator Bowl. Only your insistence on keeping Gator in the name keeps me from wanting to kill you off for taking a dump on you glorious New Year's history.
Bowl Game: BBVA Compass Bowl
Locale/Pedigree: The dump known as Legion Field in Birmingham. Why anyone would want to play here is beyond me (and part of why UAB is eternally terrible). Double that for a bowl game played on the Saturday before the national championship game when people would rather watch college basketball.
Corporate Nonsense: I suppose BBVA Compass isn't a bad sponsor, but if I were a company I wouldn't want to be associated with a game and stadium this bad.
Bowl Game: Godaddy.com Bowl
Locale: Mobile, Alabama, home of the Senior Bowl. Despite some memorable game between non-BCS league powerhouses over the years, this game is still an oddity that is overshadowed in a lot of way by it cousin the Senior Bowl, played here a few weeks later with oodles of NFL scouts watching seniors try to improve their draft stocks.
Corporate Nonsense: .com game. Blech. Go away. Bring back GMAC. Bring back the Mobile Alabama Bowl name. Make GoDaddy drop the .com (though the GoDaddy Bowl Would sound quite awkward while saying it). Whatever it is, do something...
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