Bacardi and cigars: 9 old college football bowl games we wish weren’t dead

The life of a bowl game is brutish, short and sometimes features lots of teams from the Sun Belt Conference.

When the NCAA last approved an additional bowl in 2010, the four-year average of bowl-eligible teams was 71.8. There are 35 games, featuring 70 teams. If it were to approve another, it would presumably feature a 6-6 team from a weak conference playing against .8 of a team, so... ionno, Purdue?

As we speak, two bowl games are teetering on the edge of life: the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, the game that supposedly features Big Ten teams but never has enough Big Ten teams eligible to feature one, is on alert due to the news the Detroit Lions want to start another bowl game in Detroit, at Ford Field. Organizers insist they can move the game outside, but, man, a second-tier bowl game in Detroit played outside seems a tad superfluous.

And the BBVA Compass Bowl is losing the “BBVA Compass,” and although it’s searching for a corporate sponsor, it hasn’t yet found one. And without one, the dream of a bowl game in Birmingham’s cavernous, 1920s era Legion Field might die.

If these go gently into that good night, we vow not to forget them. I’ll never forget the hot-and-ready MAC madness or Pitt’s Sisyphean appearances at the BBVA Compass Bowl.

And we’ll take a moment to remember some bowl games past, ones we wish were still with us.

Do you realize that of 35 postseason games, only one is named after an item commonly contained in a bowl followed by the word bowl, and that’s sugar? Sure, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl sounds like those maelstroms of chicken, mashed taters and corn they serve at KFC, but it’s not Belking enough.

Long live the Salad Bowl, the Soup Bowl or any other bowl-related postseason endeavor based off of eating items.

via meetthematts.com

Arizona and Arizona State made three ... trips to Phoenix, but lost each time, to Xavier, Drake and Miami (Ohio).

2012? Coach gets hit with an NCAA violation for chewing tobacco on the sidelines.

1950s? A DAMN BOWL GAME CELEBRATING THE BURGEONING TOBACCO INDUSTRY.

I know the tobacco lobby is a despicable assortment of millionaires who don’t mind the health effects their product has on millions of Americans. But so is Outback, and we don’t mind them having a bowl in Tampa.

This one was between small college teams, with the University of Tampa winning twice and Missouri Valley College going 1-0-1. Remember ties?

This once pit WAC and Pac-10 squads against each other. We should note the one-time Independence Bowl is now the AdvoCare V1000 Bowl. Methinks this is bad news for the Liberty Bowl, currently sponsored by AutoZone.

One of the more liberal usages of the word classic ever, this Silicon Valley matchup was also between the WAC and Pac-10.

The .com bubble left its mark on the college football world, as did a series of ill-fated attempts by e-commerce sites that overestimated their ability to sponsor bowls and also to exist as companies. Let’s take a look at some poordecisions by no-longer-existent websites, generally with bowls that still exist:

We can only hope that those in charge of the GoDaddy.com Bowl and the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl know what they’re doing. This is to say nothing of failed e-companies like CompUSA that sponsored bowls sans .com, or Papa John’s decision to sponsor the Papajohns.com Bowl instead of just the Papa John’s Bowl.

Our baseball championship is the World Series, and our one bowl outside of the United States was the International Bowl, even if it was so close to the United States that the Bills play there sometimes. My one regret is that it was played by American rules instead of randomly forcing a bunch of college kids to pick up the slight variations of Canadian football in three weeks. After all, the MAC tie-in made this early onset #MACtion, and I think those Wednesday night games would just have their awesome quotient heightened by rouges.

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Right now, there’s a bowl in Hawaii, which pits a Conference USA squad against the Mountain West. It makes sense, because Hawaii is beautiful. But it’s super-far away and expensive, and six-ish hours later than those on the East Coast, which makes for great Christmas Eve watching but awkward timing.

The Hawaii Bowl is, by my count, the fourth effort to have a postseason college football game in Hawaii, not counting the Hula Bowl All-Star game. Previously, we had:

via sportslogos.net

Did you know Evansville was once regarded as “The Refrigerator Capital of the United States?” YO, PEOPLE IN EVANSVILLE REALLY WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT. Incidentally, Evansville won this game twice.

Coming from half-Cuban stock (yes, I know, my name is “Rodger Sherman,” but trust me) I have a bit of bias.

It’s unfathomable to imagine a bowl in modern Cuba. Even ignoring the fact that it is so impossible for Americans to visit that even my Cuban-born dad was unable to go for more than 50 years, American sports are virtually unknown to the majority of the populace, especially football. Plus, all the buildings are falling apart, but in a hauntingly beautiful way, not a Jacksonville way.

But pre-Revolutionary Cuba was an ideal place for a bowl: warm weather, and an economy based on tourism, rum, gambling and other illicits. It’s also worth noting that Fulgencio Batista’s governance was remarkably similar to Mark Emmert’s.

The Bacardi Bowl often featured one American team against a Cuban squad. I’m not sure if it was actually sponsored by Bacardì, who used to be based in Cuba before Puerto Rico started taking credit for my people’s hard-earned rum reputation, or if that title was a nickname. But alcohol companies sponsoring bowl games would be so pointless, since every college football fan is ready to murder over his or her choice of booze.

Four times, an SEC team played against either a club or a school team from Cuba. Three times, the Cuban side failed to record a point. The fourth, Ole Miss got shut out 13-0, which I imagine was somehow Houston Nutt’s fault.

At least one of my grandparents was likely a student at the University of Havana when they were lambasted 55-0 by Southern Miss in 1946. The Golden Eagles can go 0-12 from here ‘til infinity after they rocked the abuelos’ alma mater.