The Fiesta Bowl has yet another new sponsor (PlayStation), so let’s rank all of them

The Fiesta Bowl has a new sponsor for this year’s game, and not a moment too soon. It was announced six weeks before the Fiesta serves as one of 2016’s two College Football Playoff semifinals. The game is now the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl.

From a Fiesta Bowl news release:

“The Fiesta Bowl is pleased to partner with PlayStation to present this year’s PlayStation Fiesta Bowl,” said Mike Nealy, Fiesta Bowl Executive Director. “PlayStation’s commitment to creating unique and exciting experiences matches our desire to deliver one-of-a-kind events to fans each year.”

That is some grade-A bowl game public relations, there. The game happens on New Year’s Eve in Glendale, Ariz. The winner this year goes to the National Championship.

From 1996 through the 2013 season, the Fiesta Bowl was the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, but the popular chips-and-dip-maker stopped paying for its naming rights after that. For fans like me who grew up in the Tostitos era, that was a huge part of the draw. It’s felt like the game has been in the branding wilderness ever since then – carrying out one-year relationships with Vizio and BattleFrog, and now jumping to PlayStation.

The game started in 1971, but it didn’t first have a brand-name sponsor until 1986. This year will mark a fourth sponsor in four years.

1. Tostitos (1996-January 2014)

Football postseasons are meant for chips. They’re meant for dip. They’re meant for both at the same time. So it was always neatly symmetrical to sit down and watch the Fiesta Bowl with some actual Tostitos. I can’t pinpoint the exact years I did this, but I definitely made a conscious effort to pair the tortilla chips with the football.

My boyhood college football team, Pitt, played in the Fiesta Bowl one year. I was excited about that, but then Urban Meyer and Alex Smith beat them by a lot of points. I munched on actual Tostitos all the live-long night, however.

Also: Did you know the Tostitos logo is a couple of folks holding a chip above a bowl of salsa, in the ultimate gesture of culinary togetherness?

I didn’t either, but my colleague Whitney Medworth just told me.

2. BattleFrog (January 2016)

The best thing about BattleFrog sponsoring a New Year’s Six bowl game last year was that nobody knew what BattleFrog was. I didn’t, and I looked it up at the time. (I’d forgotten about it until just now, but let’s assume the company’s mission hasn’t changed too broadly in the last year.) Here it is:

BattleFrog was a series of extreme “obstacle course races,” it said. But in August, it canceled those races through 2016 and 2017 and said it was restructuring itself as a media company. The classic obstacle course-to-media outlet pivot.

I still don’t really get BattleFrog, or what it was or will be. But I think it’s impressive that an organization nobody knows or knew about had enough money to put its name on the Fiesta Bowl for a year, so congrats to BattleFrog on its No. 2 placement.

3. Vizio (December 2014)

I have a Vizio television in the room where I do my work. It’s fine and nothing more than fine, and I’ve always preferred Panasonic.

4. IBM and its operating system (1993-1995)

It’s not unusual for tech companies to sponsor sports things. But IBM went a step further, dubbing the game the “IBM OS/2 Fiesta Bowl” as a marketing effort for its computer operating system, OS/2. It looked like this:

Technological advancement is awesome and all. I’m just not sure I’m vibing with this interface as the face of a college football bowl game, you know?

5. Sunkist (1986-1990)

I don’t know anyone who has anything specifically against Sunkist. But it’s bad branding. Sunkist is a citrus thing, right? It seems shallow to put up a bowl game with citrus-themed branding while you’ve got a historical bowl game called the Orange Bowl happening in the same year.

6. PlayStation (this year)

This isn’t Sony’s decision, but I don’t care. PlayStation stays here until EA Sports brings back the NCAA Football video game series, which we all miss dearly.

Those are my demands.