
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 21, 1993                   TAG: 9311190218
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHO'LL BE NEXT TO BUY OWN BOWL?

When I was kid growing up in Blacksburg and Virginia Tech was having a particularly bad football season, talk eventually would turn to the bowl games the Hokies weren't playing in.

And inevitably someone - usually my dad - would talk about the bowl for which Tech had prime eligibility that year: the Toilet Bowl, the Salad Bowl, the Oatmeal Bowl (because the team had taken a lot of lumps that season . . . ouch). You know the drill.

These days, it seems my dad wasn't so far off. For while a Toilet Bowl probably never will exist, there's a darn good chance that a Tidy or SaniFlush Bowl lies somewhere on our football horizon.

As I watched Tech courted by the Carquest and Poulan/Weed Eater people, I had to groan. Where will it end?

The commercialism started a while ago - it's just been so long since a team I liked played in a bowl that I hadn't paid much attention.

Now, there are few college bowls left without corporate sponsorship.

The Rose Bowl still is pristine. But recent years have seen the Copper Bowl marry the Weiser Lock Corp., Federal Express take over the Orange Bowl and the Sun Bowl in El Paso give up its maiden name completely: it is now, simply, the John Hancock Bowl.

At a recent game in Lane Stadium on Worsham Field, a friend and I had a grim vision of our football future.

We'd be in our seats, somewhere just below the nosebleed section. Unable to discern who had the ball where, we'd be forced to listen to the play-by-play.

"Virginia Tech has the ball at the Taco Bell 50-Yard Line. Here's the handoff. The Hokies have it at the First Union 40, the Jiffy Lube 35. He's going, going, yes! It's a Blacksburg Hokie Club Maroon Polyester Blazer Touchdown!"

Whereupon we would see the ball carrier doing his victory dance (brought to you by Arthur Murray dance studios) in the end zone as the traditional cannon is fired (brought to you by Hunting Masters, special orders welcome.)

Commentators and announcers would get their training in technique at auctioneering school.

Innocent children would get tongue-tied asking their parents where their seats were. ("We're in the Chevrolet seats, kids, in the Nike Just Do It row. We're in a great spot this time, right on the Budweiser 25-yard line.")

I'm not anti-football. I'm not even anti-commercial, though I admit my own private hell would be a week with that infernal Energizer Bunny.

It just seems to me that football fans have endured enough beer, batteries and bunion cream during the regular season to entitle them to utter the words "Independence Bowl" uninterrupted, commercial-free.

\ Madelyn Rosenberg is assistant editor of the New River Valley bureau of the Roanoke Times & World-News.

by CNB