In David Foster Wallace's futuristic 1996 novel Infinite Jest, years are no longer referred to by numbers: You just have to remember that Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken comes after the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. This is only a little weirder and a little less funny than what has actually happened to college football. The Peach Bowl is now the Chick-fil-A Bowl, the Citrus Bowl is the Capital One Bowl, and the Motor City Bowl is the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. Other teams will be competing at the Outback Bowl, the Insight Bowl, the MAACO Bowl Las Vegas, the Meineke Car Care Bowl, the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, the Military Bowl, and the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl. You know sponsorships are a little too easy to come by when a chain restaurant known for its chili is willing to put its name that close to the word "bowl."
Unlike other major sports governing bodies, college football's—the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.—doesn't run its own postseason. Instead, it allows private companies to start their own bowl games, invite teams to play, and then—if they choose—bring on weird sponsors. It's such a free-market system that Dan Wetzel, co-author of the new book Death to the BCS—meaning the Bowl Championship Series, the organization that runs the bowl system—says, "I could start a bowl."
The current bowl system is unpopular with just about everybody. Only 26 percent of fans like it, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. Barack Obama and John McCain campaigned against it, and it pulls in a lot less money than a March Madness-type playoff system would. "It's the only business that outsources its most profitable product," says Wetzel. "Other than to see their own team, nobody says, 'I have to go to the Humanitarian Bowl!' " While no other business would spend decades investing in a program only to hand it over to a third party—in Boise, no less—dozens do every year despite a murky payoff. Says Wetzel: "There's nothing like holding up a trophy from the galleryfurniture.com Bowl."
With 70 teams playing in bowl games this year, lots of stadiums will be pretty empty. While bowls can profit from requiring schools to buy blocks of full-price tickets to sell to fans, few institutions can unload their bounty—particularly when they're playing in a bowl in Idaho. Even at the non-ridiculous 2009 FedEx (FDX) Orange Bowl (now the Discovery Orange Bowl), Virginia Tech sold only 20 percent of the 17,500 tickets it bought for $120 apiece. It lost $1.77 million.
Still, virtually all colleges play along, often so they can tell recruits and donors they went to a bowl game—even the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl. And many coaches and athletic directors, who run the bowl system, get bonuses for getting their teams into a bowl—even the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl. "These bowls are a scam," says Brian Frederick, executive director of the Sports Fans Coalition, a lobbyist group. "They make money by selling names to sponsors. That's why you get these awful names. The uDrove Humanitarian Bowl? What the hell is that?" It's a bowl game in Idaho.
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