Robert Carter: It’s time to play “Spot the Fake Bowl”

Published 2:35 pm Monday, December 29, 2008

Grab the Tostitos, a Chick-Fil-A and some auto parts. College football bowl season is upon us.

You’re not as old as you think if you can remember only four or five bowl games each year — Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange, and Gator. The old game show “GE College Bowl” doesn’t count, though it was undoubtedly more entertaining than some of the contests foisted upon us today as bowl games.

I honestly believe that most of our bowls today are merely excuses for ESPN to show something other than World Series of Poker reruns, ladies’ billiards and cheerleading contests. Indeed, an ESPN subsidiary actually owns and created some of the games on this year’s schedule.

The best-known example is our own PapaJohns.com Bowl. I can remember how relentlessly Birmingham’s city fathers promoted the old Hall of Fame Classic in the 1970s and ‘80s. Then when that game left for Tampa, they created All-American Bowl in its place, only to drop it when the Southeastern Conference created its title game. People worked their fannies off to make those bowls a reality.

When the SEC game moved to Atlanta, Legion Field was empty in the post-season until ESPN showed up one day and announced, “Congratulations! You’ve got a new bowl game.” They didn’t even bother to tip off Gene Hallman, Metro Birmingham’s Grand Poobah of Sports, about their plans. I think that in itself may have broken some sort of county ordinance.

But the collective civic response was best described as, “Zzzzzzz….”

Three years later, that’s still the case. The participating schools can’t even sell out their entire quota of tickets. I’m not sure this year’s tilt between North Carolina State and Rutgers could fill up Regions Park, much less Legion Field. A rematch of Hoover and Prattville high schools would draw a better crowd.

I suspect that many of these eleventh-tier games follow the same pattern. ESPN owns seven of them, including ours. I doubt that you will see many travel agencies offering exclusive packages to any of them, not even the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl.

Just for fun, I’ve come up with a list of some of the lesser known bowl games. See if you can figure out which ones are real, and which ones are merely products of my own warped mind. Sorry, no prizes — not even a slice of Papa John’s pizza.

Bell Helicopters Armed Forces Bowl. Previously known as the PlainsCapital Bank Fort Worth Bowl, this year’s matchup features Houston against the Air Force Academy. I actually own a T-shirt for this game from when Cincinnati was a participant — I got it on sale for $1.98 from a suburban Cincy superstore nearly seven months later.

Magicjack St. Petersburg Bowl. I didn’t even know what a MagicJack was until I fell asleep one night with the TV on, only to wake up to a commercial for this device. Yes, folks, they’re getting bowl game title sponsors from late-night commercials. I just took a quick poll of my colleagues here, and we figure we can get our own bowl if we chip in $20 each. The NJN Bowl will be held at Mortimer Jordan High School. (Good seats still available.)

IHOP Bowl. This titanic struggle features Eastern Kentucky and Indiana State. The winners get all the pancakes they can eat, and they dump a bottle of maple syrup over their coach’s head. Held at Grand Rapids, Michigan, for reasons I can’t fathom — why would anyone want to go to Grand Rapids in late December?

Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl. Ooooh, Louisiana Tech and Northern Illinois! Two of the greatest traditions in college football battling it out in beautiful, uh, Shreveport. Set the TiVo, folks.

Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl. I had no idea who or what Roady’s was until I Googled them. They’re a chain of truck stops — turns out there’s one on I-65 at Hanceville. I have no idea whether the company is very humanitarian or not. All I care is that they have good coffee and clean rest rooms. The game is in Boise, Idaho, at the stadium with the blue artificial turf. Truckers would probably not approve.

KFC Gravy Bowl. Here’s Maine pairing up with Northern Michigan, and if there were ever two schools I would associate with good football and fried chicken, these would be the ones. Played at Harland Sanders Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky.

International Bowl presented by Tim Horton’s. Buffalo — the Turner Gill team, not the Bills — plays Connecticut in Toronto, Ontario. The teams still get four down instead of the usual three in Canada. No word on whether they can have 12 men on the field or kick a rouge for one point. Nice bowl, eh?



Answers: The Armed Forces Bowl and St. Pete Bowl are real. The IHOP Bowl is completely fake. The Weed-Eater Bowl was the former name for what was previously the Independence Bowl, and has since reverted to that name. The Roady’s Bowl and the International Bowl are for real (though I made up the Tim Horton’s sponsorship — an inside joke to any native Canadians reading this). As for the KFC Gravy Bowl — it’s as fake as their mashed potatoes.



Robert Carter is the sports editor of The North Jefferson News.