Bowl Games - Toilet Bowl? Cereal Bowl?

Today is New Year's Day. One great American New Year's tradition is the Bowl Game. College football teams get together to play in a post-season game. A reward for a great regular-season.

At first, bowl games seem to be named for agricultural products grown in the area. For example, there's the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Citrus Bowl, Peach Bowl, and of course, the Rose Bowl. There were also bowls that seemed to stand for random things associated with their geography, like the Fiesta Bowl, the Gator Bowl, or the Sun Bowl. Some had random names, like the Hall of Fame Bowl, in Tampa, Florida. Where on earth did that name come from? There is no Hall of Fame in Tampa!

Oftentimes, the stadium where the bowl game was played actually shared a name with the bowl game itself (like the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Gator Bowl). But some of these bowl games have moved out of the stadium that shares their name.

Like everything else, these grand old institutions have gone commercial, and traditions have broken down. Many of the major bowl games are not even played on New Year's Day anymore. In addition, the bowls now have corporate sponsorships, which are included in their names: for example, the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the FedEx Orange Bowl, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the AT&T Cotton Bowl, and the Toyota Gator Bowl. Some of the bowls have completely lost their original name to the corporate sponsor, like the Chik-Fil-A Bowl (formerly Peach Bowl) or the Champs Sports Bowl and Capital One Bowl (formerly Citrus Bowl), or the Outback Bowl (formerly Hall of Fame Bowl). Other bowl games simply started their bowl-life with a corporate-sponsorship name.

But does this really matter? What is in a name (for a bowl) after all? It seems like a stupid name for a game - a "bowl". Is this based solely on a stadium's shape? If that's the case, why aren't all games in the stadium bowl games.

I can understand a name like "sugar bowl." Most homes have sugar bowl in the cupboard. Maybe there are places with orange bowls, too. But a fiesta bowl? And, a gator bowl seems like it's just asking for trouble....

So, maybe there should be more bowl games with normal sounding names. I suggest the Toilet Bowl, and the Cereal Bowl. These are actual "bowls" found in every home. Plus, there are obvious corporate-naming opportunities. For example, the American Standard Toilet Bowl, or the Kellogg's Cereal Bowl. Yeah, that sounds good!