Power Ranking the Terrible Bowls

by Slate Quicksilver

By now, you probably know what bowl game your team is going to. Unless, that is, you are a fan of Michigan, Notre Dame or a team who had less than six whole wins this season. We have plenty of time to break down the games and talk about the teams and wish pain and pestilence on our rivals, so instead we will power rank the bowls themselves. And not just the good bowls, the bad ones.

Note that we do this knowing that sponsorship on this site will probably never come.

#10: MAACO Las Vegas Bowl
Car care is important. We all know that, and so does college football. We also have the Meineke Car Care Bowl, the GMAC bowl (the financial arm of General Motors) and the Roady's Humanitarian Bowl (more on that later). MAACO primarily focuses on body work and paint jobs. This means they are free to rob you blind as you go in for, perhaps a fender alignment, and you leave with a $4,000 bill. This means MAACO has a great deal of liquid capital with which to blast you with commercial after commercial featuring cars being fixed by "helpful mechanics." "Helpful" meaning "terrible human being who would sell you into slavery if it meant an extra $60 commission."

#9: International Bowl
Nothing says "the pageantry of college football" like playing a game in front a quarter-filled stadium equipped for a bastardized version of the sport being played in city and country filled with an ambivalent populace who has no clue whatsoever that the game is being played within their city limits.

#8: Konica Minolta Gator Bowl
Japanese manufacturer Konica Minolta approves of Mark Mangino's efforts and management methods at Kansas. The Japanese workplace is far different than the blandness of the American workplace where every minor flaw and mistake is magnified and analyzed by a bored and listless staff. In Japan, slapping a worker for a lack of success is not completely off. Neither is getting completely bombed at a bar during a holiday party and singing racist songs. Yet, why did Konica Minolta decide to island hop its way all the way to Jacksonville for the "famed" Gator Bowl?

#7: Papajohns.com Bowl
It's one thing to be a bowl named after national pizza delivery chain. But this one is named after the website for said chain. Even funnier, it's not "new" to be able to order pizza online. Clearly, this bowl (in wonderful Birmingham, Alabama) is stuck in 2002. Then again, some parts of Alabama still don't have the internet... so it can be inferred that this is a regional pull.

#6: Champs Sports Bowl
Not only is this bowl named after a sports apparel outlet, but its not even the primary breadwinner of the corporation. That would be Foot Locker. In fact, it's actually F.W. Woolworth of Woolworth's fame. And even amongst that, against other apparel stores, they are #3 behind Sports Authority and Dick's.

#5: Gaylord Hotels Music City
Terrible Name. Terrible terrible name. Though, hands down they have the best hotels in America.

#4: New Mexico Bowl
A bowl. On December 19th. In Albuquerque, New Mexico. Did anyone who was associated with this bowl understand how bad of an idea that is? Seriously. The amount of money made on that bowl probably does not even eclipse the money you have to pay for the lights in the stadium.

#3: Little Caesar's Bowl
This bowl is wrong on several levels. First off, it is in Detroit on the day after Christmas. How and why did someone come up with that idea. Not only that, the MAC runner up and a C-USA team play in it. So right off the bat, no one will go. Worse still, the Little Caesar Bowl? It is true that Michigan is the last bastion for the once amazing cheap pizza guys ($5 for a large!?!?), but my God, they could have come up with 95 other sponsors before this one.

#2: San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
Of all the regional sponsors, this is as regional as it gets. In fact, this isn't even regional, this is city level. Funnier still, they show commercials for it... nationwide. "See our branch across the street from In and Out Burger on Main."

#1: Roady's Humanitarian
This is, by far, the worst sponsor of all. Roady's Truck Stops. Trucker stops, lovely. While the Fiesta Bowl invokes ideas of a party and fun, this one inspires getting an STD on brown stained toilet seat and shaking off a propositioned sex act by a transvestite in Helena, Montana. I think there comes a time where you might as well not have a sponsor because after a while the sponsor is just this bad and holds a negative connotation. This is an example of when that time has come. Even worse is that the bowl in Boise, Idaho. Feel bad for the sad souls who have to call this game on December 30th in the frozen apocalypse in the Rockies.