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12.3.06 Bowling for dollars by Jon Worley
A Brut man will never let you down. So Missouri had a good season. We're headed to a bowl. The Brut Bowl. Once upon a time the game was known as the Sun Bowl. It's had other sponsors over the years (John Hancock, Norwest, Wells Fargo and Vitalis), but Brut? By Faberge? Ye gods! As it turns out, Brut is now made by something called Helen of Troy, which happens to be headquartered in El Paso, which is where the game is played. And the Sun Bowl has been around since 1936, making it one of the most venerable games around. And there's some Mizzou history there as well, as we won the battle of the Tigers in 1973, stomping Auburn 34-17. Of course, previous champions include such national powers as Hardin-Simmons, Southwestern Texas State and West Texas State (now West Texas A&M)--and all of them won it twice. Something called the Second Air Force beat Hardin-Simmons in 1943, but there was a war on at the time. My personal favorite has to be the 1940 game, in which Arizona State and Catholic University played to a 0-0 tie. But still. The Brut Sun Bowl? Twenty years ago, that would have been a joke on "Saturday Night Live," back when the first bowl sponsorships were coming into vogue. Now it doesn't even sound strange. Here's a list of real bowls being played this December:
For the record, the GMAC bowl used to be known as the Mobile Bowl, and the Papajohns.com Bowl used to be known as the Birmingham Bowl. So the new names might be considered improvements in many parts of the country. The champion for name switching (I think) is what was originally known as the Sunshine Classic, which is the lesser of two bowls played in Orlando. As near as I can tell, the event changed its name to the Blockbuster Bowl before the first game in 1990. In 1994 it became the Carquest Bowl. In 1998 it became the Micron PC Bowl. In 2000, there was a slight change to the Micronpc.com Bowl. In 2001, the game appropriated a "classic" name, becoming the Visit Florida Tangerine Bowl. The original Tangerine Bowl, by the way, also was played in Orlando and is now known as the Capital One Bowl. Speeding along, Mazda attached its name to the Tangerine in 2002, and then Champs Sports ditched the fruit and took the name all for itself in 2004. Not counting the Micron PC "adjustment," that's six name changes in seventeen years. There have always been wacky bowls. When I lived in Battle Creek, I saw a clipping for the 1961 Aviation Bowl in Dayton, Ohio. New Mexico spanked Western Michigan 28-12. Havana held a few Bacardi Bowls back in the first half of the twentieth century. Florida State lost to Wofford in the only Cigar Bowl back in 1950. My own beloved Mizzou Tigers lost 20-7 to USC in the sole L.A. Christmas Festival Bowl in 1924. Texas A&M whipped Georgia in the singular Presidential Cup, held in 1950 over in College Park, Maryland, about two miles from where I live now. Then there was the Sports Humanitarian Bowl, held in Boise. I liked that game not only for its goofy name but for the blue color of the turf. In 2005 it became the MPC Bowl. And yes, you guessed it, MPC is the new name of Micron PC (you know, the folks who sponsored the re-incarnation of the Tangerine Bowl for a couple of years). So there have not only been two different Tangerine Bowls, but two different MPC (or Micron PC) Bowls as well. It may be hard to believe, but this isn't even unusual. AT&T was the first "name sponsor" of the Rose Bowl in 1998, and now its name adorns the Cotton Bowl (Citi has the Rose nowadays). This may seem like a collage of unrelated facts. Barbara lectured me about this before I wrote this. "You have to have a point! Missouri going to the Brut Bowl isn't enough for a column!" She's probably right about that, but there is a point to be found within the morass. It used to mean something to go to a bowl game. Growing up in Big Eight territory, the Orange Bowl was always the annual goal, though it seemed only Nebraska or Oklahoma actually went. One year when I was at Missouri, coach Woody Widenhofer predicted a trip to the Orange. Every game that year, we students came armed with oranges. When our team did something particularly stupid (usually within the first five minutes), we pelted the field with citrus. For the record, Missouri never went any bowl (even a crappy one) in my five years at the school. But every fall, hope sprung eternal for a New Year's date in Miami. Back in 1982, UNM and Tulsa each finished 10-1, and neither got invited to a bowl. So some smart-asses created the "Justice Bowl." Computer geeks hashed out the likely course of the game, and then some folks with old-timey radio experience read the play-by-play from a script and added the requisite sound noises. I heard it in Clovis, N.M., and the Lobos won, 30-27. Folks over in Tulsa heard the Golden Hurricane (singular, not plural) win 27-24. Everyone was happy, and the local radio stations sold plenty of ads. Back in 1982, there were 16 bowls for Division I schools. Now there are 32. As near as I can tell, in 1982 there were no "name sponsors" of any bowl games. Now all but the newest (and smallest) bowls have corporate logos splashed all over them. I guess the folks behind the Justice Bowl were merely ahead of the times.
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