The Tucks Medicated Pad Annual Article About Name Sponsorships on Bowls

HT PoorYorickEntertainment

: Hey there, Steve!

: [sigh] Hey Carol-Sue.

: Why so glum?

: Well I told my wife last weekend that I want to go to the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl. Then she went and booked our flight and told her mother we were coming to visit!

: Then why aren't you happy?

: Because my mother-in-law lives in Phoenix!

: Oh.

: She thought I meant the…whatever it's called I dunno—the one we went to against Kansas State!

: I see. Well it looks like you need LANGUAGE!

: Language?

That's right, Steve! You see, I'm a scientist. And we here at the Human Race have developed a special patented technology called Language™ to communicate ideas using mutually understood sounds.

One of the keys to our Language™ technology is the ability to identify a person, place, or thing by association with a specific set of organic sounds called "nouns." Through the transmission and recognition of commonly recognized nouns within a grammatical framework, we make it possible for another human to actually understand what bowl you're actually talking about!

Our nouns are specially pre-formulated to achieve maximum comprehension. By using a noun your listener is already familiar with, the thing you actually meant to convey will be transmitted directly to the brain thing of your audience, enabling 100% instant, seamless, optimized, non-GMO return on linguistic investment.

: Wow! Where do I find nouns like that?

: Well that's the great news, Steve: you know them already! But if you hit THE JUMP right now, you can have all of these nouns that describe bowl games, and their commercial-free logos, for absolutely free!

Date/Time	They Call It	You Call it	Logo	Since	Teams
Dec19-noon		New Mexico		2006	Zona/UNM
Dec19-12:30		Las Vegas		1992	Utah/BYU
Dec19-4:30		New Orleans		2001	LaTech/ArkSt
Dec19-5:30		Camellia		2014	OHIO!/AppSt
Dec19-7pm	Cure	or Citrus III for Breast Cancer		2015	SJSU/GASt
Dec21-2:30		Miami Beach		2014	WKU/USF
Dec22-3:30	Famous Idaho…	Potato		1997	Akron/UtahSt
Dec22-7pm		Boca		2014	Tol/Temple
Dec23-4:30		Poinsettia		2005	Boise/NIU
Dec23-8pm	GoDaddy	Mobile		1999	BGSU/GASo
Dec24-noon		Bahamas		2014	WMich/MTSU
Dec24-8pm		Hawaii or Aloha		2002	Cincy/SDSt
Dec26-11a		St. Petersburg or Tampa II		2008	UConn/Marsh
Dec26-2p		Sun Bowl		1934	Miami/WSU
Dec26-2:20	Heart of Dallas	or Cotton II		2010	UW/SoMiss
Dec26-3:30		Pinstripe		2010	Duke/Ind
Dec26-5:45		Independence		1976	VT/Tulsa
Dec26-9:15	Foster Farms	San Francisco		2002	Neb/UCLA
Dec28-2:30	Military	D.C. Military One		2008	Pitt/Navy
Dec28-5pm	Quick Lane	Motor City		2014	Minn/CMU
Dec29-2pm	Armed Forces	Ft. Worth Military One		2003	Cal/AF
Dec29-5:30	Russell Athletic	Tangerine or Citrus II		1990	UNC/Baylor
Dec29-7:30		Arizona		2016	CSU/Nevada
Dec29-9pm	Texas	or Bluebonnet		2006	TT/LSU
Dec30-3:30	Belk	Queen City		2002	MSSt/NCSt
Dec30-noon		Birmingham		2006	Aub/Mem
Dec30-7pm		Music City		1998	A&M/Lville
Dec30-10:30		Holiday		1978	Wis/USC
Dec31-noon		Peach		1968	Hou/FSU
Dec31-4pm		Orange		1935	Clem/Okla
Dec31-8pm		Cotton		1937	Bama/MSU
Jan1-noon	Outback	or Hall of Fame		1986	NW/Tenn
Jan1-1pm		Citrus		1946	Mich/Fla
Jan1-1pm		Fiesta		1971	ND/OSU
Jan1-4:30		Rose		1902	Iowa/Stan
Jan1-8:30		Sugar		1935	OleMiss/OkSt
Jan2-noon	Taxslayer	Gator		1945	PSU/Ga
Jan2-3:20		Liberty		1959	KSU/Ark
Jan2-6:45		Alamo		1993	TCU/Ore
Jan2-10:15		Cactus (or Copper)		1989	WVU/ASU
Jan11-8:30		Championship		2015	?/?

Click each logo to get the full size. Use however you like.

: Thanks guys! These are great! In fact they're not nearly as annoying as they used to be!

: I know! Like, as long as you ignore the sponsor name ahead of the actual name most of the time you can actually figure out what the hell bowl they're talking about. There are a few annoying ones left however. In order of I want to choke the organizers:

1. Gator Bowl. The sponsor is some tax company that charges you to do a worse job than it will take you to do the same thing online for the same amount of time, and they got rid of a name that we've been familiar with for 70 years! SEVENTY YEARS! Gator Bowl. In Jacksonville. Where they have Gators.
2. Motor City, Queen City, Mobile, San Fran. Sponsor names replacing recognizable city names or nicknames. Even if these are relatively new bowls, you should keep a static city-centric name on the game for continuity and comprehension.
3. Citrus II/Tangerine. This one has had so many names. Tangerine, which is the Citrus Bowl's old name, gets the "This is the Citrus Bowl's little brother bowl" across. So does "Citrus II"
4. Military/Armed Forces. You can't have two Support the Troops™ bowls. The one that's now in Annapolis can stay the Military Bowl or have a cool name like The Great Big USO Show, while the other can be the TCU Bowl or whatever not military related. For this year specify the city first.
5. Outback/Hall of Fame. They've been sponsoring this so long now that most people have forgotten the other Florida bowl with a Big Ten tie-in might as well go by the sponsor's name. If Outback ever drops this, go back to the original name and keep it that way. Can count the Potato Bowl here as well since saying Potato Bowl will conjure the Boise game.
6. Cure Bowl. Nice idea, good charity. This is our concern:
   So until this game is established specify it's the Citrus III for Breast Cancer Research Bowl.

: Does this really matter?

No. It's just annoying.

: Don't you think there should be fewer bowl games?

No I like football, and adding more football plus a free trip for more football teams is pretty nice. The players are on break so it shouldn't affect their schooling as much as, say, a conference championship game the week of Finals. And football on TV is good for fans of football.

: Don't you think having so many bowl games ruins what's great about bowls?

No I think the prestige of going to a bowl game died in the 1990s. They tried to manufacture it back with the 6-win and then the over-.500 rules, which just punished middle-of-the-road Power 5 schools who scheduled anybody of consequence in the non-conference. If the NCAA wants to actually have a meaningful get-in policy, they should not count games against FCS schools for anything. 

: What do you have against ads? Don't you sell those?

Let's stop before here.

I went off on this last year. That again:

What specifically bothers me about bowl game naming is the people doing the selling don't provide any product or service. If Chobani buys the "right" to name an Ann Arbor bowl game, what does the bowl game provide? The chief marketing service—name recognition—is done by the media, and by extension the public, as we talk about the Chobani Bowl.

It's not the bowls (let alone the teams in the bowls) who get paid the most by title sponsorships, but the TV stations who are broadcasting the games. They in turn package those ads with their regular programs so that it's impossible to separate the title sponsorships themselves from the ad package they were sold with. Over 70% of the revenue from title sponsorships in 2014 went to ESPN, because ESPN sold the BCS bowl sponsorships on top of seven more games they own.

Language is public, or else it can't do the thing it does, which is help us communicate information to each other. If a sponsor (e.g. Outback)'s name has affixed itself to the general consciousness of that game, communication is served and there's no harm.

…

The sponsorship money, it's supposed, makes these games possible, but they don't really cover the payouts (that is on the organizers), and the schools, as detailed on this site before, tend to lose money on all the bowls below the $2 million payout line, what with being overcharged for flights and food and hotel rooms (which all kick back to the bowls). The sponsorship money itself mostly feeds the TV dudes. Other than the fun of playing in it for the players, the point of a small-time bowl game is to fill more TV slots with live football.