Bowl Over-sponsorship ... Good Grief!

This college football season has boiled down to bowl time. It used to be all of the bowls were played on New Years' Day, with a few exceptions of some pretend-bowls that couldn't attract any team with a winning record. If your team made a bowl on New Year's Day, you were something special. The Bowls were named for themselves ... Sugar Bowl, Gator Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Rose Bowl ......

Now, we're into big money for College athletic programs. If you want a college to play in your bowl, you've got to pay them an enormous sum of money. The number of bowls has exploded - 34 bowls on my list, and I'm sure I missed some of the 'more obscure'. That's 68 teams - about a third of the Division I teams play in a bowl somewhere. Any team that has a .500 record or above has a very good chance of being invited to a bowl somewhere in the country. The bowl names are insignificant - it's all about the sponsorship (the sponsors give you the moiney you have to pay the teams to come to your bowl). Pretty ridiculous ...

New Mexico Bowl (no sponsor?)
St. Petersburg Bowl (no sponsor?)
R&L Carriers Bowl
Maaco Bowl
San Diego Credit Union Bowl
Sheraton Bowl
Little Caesars Bowl
Meineke Car Care Bowl
Emerald Nuts Bowl
Gaylord Hotels Bowl
Advocare V100 Bowl
Eaglebank Bowl
Champs Sports Bowl
Roady's Humanitarian Bowl
Pacific Life Bowl
Brut Bowl
Bell Helicopter Bowl
Texas Bowl (no sponsor?)
Insight Bowl
Chick-Fil-A Bowl
Outback Bowl
Capital One Bowl
Konica Minolta Bowl
Citi Bowl
Allstate Bowl
International Bowl
AT&T Bowl
PapaJohns.com Bowl
Autozone Bowl
Valero Bowl
Tostitos Bowl
Fedex Bowl
GMAC Bowl
Citi Bowl (second one)

Now, as a player for one of these teams, I would be incredibly proud to take back to the U a trophy that says "Winner - 2009 San Diego Credit Union Bowl".

If a college football playoff system would get rid of all this crap, I'd be all for it.

Update - Yesteday, Dec. 31, the Irving City Council unanimously approved a deal which will declare Kraft Foods the official sponsor of the demolition of Texas Stadium. Yes ... the destruction of the Home of the Cowboys will be sponsored by boxed macaroni and cheese. To be fair ... Kraft will donate $150,000 in food anc cash to local charities, and will have a $1,000,000 ad campaign this coming year leading up to a contest to see who gets to push 'the button'. The City of Irving doesn't get any money from Kraft. Still ....

Until this, the most ridiculous football sponsorship incident I remember was a Cotton Bowl telecast some years ago. Exxon had the naming rights to the Bowl itself. On TV, the opening kickoff was announced as: "Welcome to the Mobil kickoff here at the Exxon Cotton Bowl". This was before, of course, Exxon and Mobil merged.