Speaking of bowl games, the names are getting ridiculous: Against Hunger Bowl, for example.
There used to be 5 major bowls — Orange, Sugar, Rose, Cotton, Fiesta.
Now, there are some 2-3 dozen spread out for 3-4 weeks.
“Speaking of bowl games, the names are getting ridiculous: Against Hunger Bowl, for example”
The worst is the Humanitarian Bowl. They don’t allow tackling, so they have to play flag football instead.
The traditional big four bowls were the Rose, Cotton, Sugar, and Orange. Fiesta is a latecomer. In 1965 the bowl games were as follows:
Rose
Cotton
Sugar
Orange
Sun
Gator
Bluebonnet
Liberty
Tangerine
Bowl games were a marketing tool designed to get people in ice bound locales to travel to a sun belt city for a weekend of football and revelry. Fruits and vegetables were popular names because the sponsors were local and they were trying to sell local commodities. Once TV took over and domed stadiums appeared, the whole thing got out of hand. TV meant that revenue wasn’t tied up in the seats anymore and the name became a valuable commodity in and of itself. Notice that its hard to catch a view of the stands during these early bowl games. ESPN and the sponsors don’t want people to know that the stands are empty. That dynamic changes as we now turn to the big bowl games.