Tonight, Utah battles Navy in the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, a thrilling occasion that has the New York Times’ Jim Reisler hailing “an indulgence of 32 televised games in 20 days featuring teams and players you have scarcely heard of and may never hear from again.”
Prowl the Internet, and you will find evidence of 30 or so games in the dustbin. Remember Tampa™s Cigar Bowl? The Camellia Bowl? The Presidential Cup Bowl in Maryland? The list goes on and on. Goodbye, Salad Bowl, Bluegrass Bowl, Dixie Classic. So long, Aviation Bowl in Dayton, Ohio.
Many of those bowl games were played in exotic places. So what were organizers thinking in putting together the Garden State Bowl at the midwinter splendor of Giants Stadium?
Remember the Oahu Bowl in Honolulu? First played in 1998, it died in 2000. And although the Blockbuster Bowl made its debut in Miami in 1990, the game became the Carquest Bowl in 1994 and the Micron PC Bowl in 1998. By 2000, it was the 2000 MicronPC.com Bowl. Remember its champion? It was North Carolina State.
Trying to remember who played in the MicronPC.com Bowl goes to the heart of the current bowl situation. Many of the games these next three weeks come with tongue-twister corporate names, like the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth. And on New Year™s Day comes not only the Rose Bowl, but the œRose Bowl presented by Citi.
So maybe some of those forgotten games were not so bad after all. At least the names were simpler.
Consider, then, that Christmas Day is the 100th anniversary of the first Bacardi Bowl, also known as the Cigar Bowl and the Rhumba Bowl, in Havana. Louisiana State pounded Havana University, 56-0.