January bowl games mean a second visit from Santa Claus for participating players -- only this Santa is wearing noise-canceling headphones and some sweet Oakleys, brah! Oregon and Auburn players, while being cruelly denied the boon of a miniature football helmet, will receive the standard-issue watch-and-cap gift set from Tostitos BCS Championship Game organizers, along with a backpack “stocked with Tostitos products”! Mind you boys don’t bash those around, now! You’ll end up with a nylon bag full of chip fragments and broken glass, and that’s really only a suitable gift for your unfortunate comrades in the BBVA Compass Bowl, no?
For their larger-ticket items, Ducks and Tigers will be perusing the gift suite, an oh-so-Hollywood tradition-come-lately whose origins are explained by Sports Business Journal:
2011 BCS Championship Game Bowl Swag: Oregon, Auburn Players Get Their Conspicuous Consumption On
The gift-suite concept is the brainchild of Jon Cooperstein. A veteran of the incentives gifts industry, Cooperstein was hired by Carrolton, Texas-based Performance Award Center (PAC) in April to launch its sports division. He took his sports Rolodex with him, and the 30-year-old company instantly became the dominant player in the niche. PAC has a 60,000-square-foot warehouse where it handles every stage of the process, from ordering to shipping.
Cooperstein said having a suite on two campuses, compared with a single, on-site hotel presence, allows for more local media coverage for the bowl. It also can provide a school with some nontangible benefits.
“Let’s say you are a coach,” he said. “You can walk high school recruits through the suite and say, ‘Check this out. Next year, when you’re on our team, this will be you walking through here.’”
Players are given an allotment of points, and allowed to select from a number of posh presents:
Among the items on offer, which the bowl categorizes by value:
Sony PlayStation 3 ($375); Nintendo Wii with two games, 21-speed mountain bike, Lane recliner ($300 each), Blue-Ray Disc player ($175-$200); FM clock radio for iPod or noise-canceling headphones (about $40).
If you think this sounds an awful lot like redeeming hard-won tickets at an upscale video arcade, you're not wrong. And if you spend the rest of the day with an indelible image of wee LaMichael James sitting in one of those claw machines surrounded by purple off-brand teddy bears and wizard's hats, waiting to be plucked by a loving child, well, you're not alone.
