26.11.03
College Football: In my last post, I had an aside about how they named bowl games, with a promise to expand on it, and, in picking games and talking about the usual crapola, I didn't come back to it, mainly because I just got caught up in the rest of the post.
As an aside, how do my Caps beat my mother's Red Wings? Suffice it to say that my Caps have, to be quite frank, sucked so far this season. And then they go and turn in a performance like that against the Wings. Eh. I'm not sure I'll ever figure it out.
Anyway, back to the whole Bowl naming thing. My feelings about it are that a real bowl name isn't, in its entireity, the name of the host city, or the name of some corporation paying for the privilege of a commercial every time the bowl is mentioned in the media. And they certainly do not combine the two. Names like Cotton, Rose and Sugar are fine bowl names; names like Diamond Walnut San Francisco, or San Francisco Diamond Walnut, or Continental Tire or Las Vegas are not. I understand the financial climate, especially given that bigger bowls have to make bigger payouts, and therefore may have to depend upon some sort of corporate sponsorship to turn a profit. That's fine, so long as the bowl doesn't completely sell out (like the Capital One Bowl did). If they don't sell out, then I can still say "Sugar Bowl" instead of "Nokia Sugar Bowl", or "Rose Bowl" instead of "Rose Bowl presented by AT&T". And, to me, it will always be the "Citrus Bowl". Steve Spurrier didn't say "You can't spell 'Capital One' without UT", did he? I don't bloody think so.
I am ambivalent about the bowl name being the nickname of a city, rather than the city name. It's kind of uncreative that they dubbed them the "Motor City Bowl" or the "Music City Bowl"; corporate sponsorships certainly didn't help the names, and I can't remember both of them offhand (I remember one, but not the other, and I won't play favourites). Although using a city's nickname is slightly uncreative, it is still better than the "Detroit Bowl" or "Nashville Bowl".
I would prefer the name "Toilet Bowl" to some of the current names (such as Fort Worth Bowl, or GMAC Bowl). In fact, a few years ago, when Notre Dame and Ohio State were struggling through seasons (neither would finish bowl-eligible), the big joke that a few friends and I had was for the two teams to play each other in Toledo and call the game the "Toilet Bowl". If the bowl organisers felt the urge to commercialise the name, I could go along with "Ti-D Bowl" or "2000 Flushes Bowl", simply because they were appropriate. If you can find a corporate sponsor whose name is appropriate and demonstrates a bit of creativity, then that's okay (I can't think of any examples, though, offhand). But don't buy out the original, pre-commercial names. If you're a group of bowl organisers, then just tack the title sponsor's name on to the beginning of the bowl name, or the presenting sponsor's name on the end. But bowl names which are solely commercial, and don't demonstrate a whit of creativity just suck.
Zuletzt: Am subscribed to a Capitals discussion list. Just got this:
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 20:33:18 -0500
From: address blocked
To: Caps discussion list
Subject: Sabers, 5-1 2nd intermission
Well, after that horrible scare Monday, it looks as if the planets are
back in their proper orbits.
Enjoy your evening - Ryan
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