Bowl Mania

The college football Bowl Season is in full stride. There are no fewer than thirty-three bowl games this year, not to mention the BCS National Championship which is prestigious beyond simple bowl designation.

Originally, college football bowl games were a product of warm weather city boosterism. Pasadena, CA grew roses and other flowers in the winter, but few midwestern snowbirds travelled to the west coast to enjoy the blooms. Its city fathers put on a floral bedecked parade and still they did not come. Add a football game, call it the Rose Bowl and on New Year's Day half of Iowa (or Ohio or Michigan) shows up.

Not to be left out, New Orleans began the Sugar Bowl, Miami started the Orange Bowl, and Dallas birthed the Cotton Bowl. Football stadia somewhat resemble "bowls" and a local product got free advertising. One had the mental image of an enormous concrete structure filled with roses, sugar, oranges, or cotton as opposed to drunken louts. It was somehow soothing.

Time and TV money led to the proliferation of bowls that we see today. Alas, we ran out of soothing bowl names. The Poinsettia Bowl works, while the Gator Bowl doesn't, though the image of 70,000 ravenous reptiles in a Jacksonville, FL stadium is quite the mental image. The Sun Bowl is somewhat soothing if we assume sunshine and not a star shooting out deadly radiation in that El Paso, TX structure.

Yesterday, I watched the Humanitarian Bowl live and in color from Boise, ID. Apparently, humanitarianism is a prominent export from Boise. Are Idahoans implying that they and only they devote their lives to the betterment of their fellow man? Did concession stands revert from selling overpriced, watered-down beer to handing out winter clothing to the needy? Were the stadium gates flung open to the proverbial "huddled masses" free of charge? Would one expect any less from a stadium full of Humanitarians?

Today, I plan to watch the Insight Bowl from Tempe, AZ. What can we expect from a stadium full of insightful Arizonans? A viable National Health Care Plan? Not a problem with 70,000 insightful thinkers on the job. Every American will have health coverage by halftime. That pesky Palestinian Question? It will be solved by the final whistle. If the game goes to overtime, we will finally know how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. I've been searching for that answer for years.

That's the joy of college football bowl games - bringing humanitarians and insightful folks together for the betterment of society.