THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 26, 1994 TAG: 9412230119
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
IF THE UNITED STATES is going to stay competitive in the global economy of sports, we need to take a serious look at our bowl games.
Did you know that we will only have 45 bowl games between Christmas and New Year's? That's fewer than one per state.
It is small wonder Ross Perot keeps wondering publicly about the reduced quality of life our children and grandchildren will inherit.
No one knows why we only have 45 bowl games. Mexico reportedly sold two of them while we weren't looking, repainting the domed stadiums as sombreros. And Canada is believed to have stolen three bowl games, which were later smuggled to Iran labeled as nuclear reactors.
The bowl situation is worse than originally reported. Experts say our bowl game readiness has slipped dramatically under President Clinton. In the event of nuclear attack, we could lose 20 or 30 bowls during a first strike. And between 2,000 and 4,000 televised beer, battery and razor commercials. It would mean the end of western civilization as we now know it.
It's a good thing our founding fathers and mothers didn't live to see what has happened. The country has 200 times more airports than bowl games.
One of the reasons we have so few bowls is that Pizza Hut and Domino's - among the biggest sponsors of televised sports commercials - are afraid the names of new bowls might include those of alternative food sources. Fruit - as in Peach Bowl - does not hurt sales of their product, according to pizza marketing experts.
But mention a Pasta Bowl or Caesar Salad Bowl, and they freak. So we will never see those bowls in the same way that we won't see a Pipe Bowl, which the tobacco manufacturers wanted to sponsor in Durham, N.C. (The surgeon general vetoed the idea even though the tobacco lobby was willing to put a printed warning on the tunnel leading into the stadium, which resembled a pipe stem.)
But there are lots of teams out there and plenty of bowl names to choose from. Here are a few bowls I'd like to see with teams picked from the World Almanac's list of colleges and universities. Moisture Bowl Snow College vs. Our Lady of the Lake Utensil Bowl Spoon River College vs. Fork Union Military Academy Predatory Bird Bowl Hawkeye Institute of Technology vs. Black Hawk College. Timidity Bowl Craven Community College vs. Cape Fear Technical Institute Equestrian Bowl Rider College vs. Saddleback College Disaster Bowl Slippery Rock vs. Skidmore Mixed Royalty Bowl Duke University vs. Queens College Sacred Oceans Bowl Atlantic Christian vs. Pacific Lutheran Emotions Bowl Hope College vs. Moody Bible Institute I.Q. Bowl Brainerd Community College vs. Flathead Valley Community College. Geology Bowl Red Rocks Community College vs. University of Texas of the Permian Basin by CNB