Bowl Game Mania

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Maybe City of Akron should lobby for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Bowl????

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At least three sites eye adding their own bowls

FBA expected to rule today on games' fates

Thursday, April 22, 2004

By Ted Lewis

Staff writer

How many bowl games are too many?

We may be finding out.

Along with the 27 existing bowls, the NCAA's Bowl Certification Subcommittee met with representatives from proposed games in Denver, Miami and Indianapolis during the Football Bowl Association convention that concluded Wednesday in New Orleans.

Seattle and Charleston, S.C., also are considering hosting bowls of their own.

Approval for the new games would not come until next year, but adding just the three that had representatives appear before the committee would bring the total to 30.

The problem is that last season there were just 63 bowl-eligible teams in Division I-A. That would barely fill the number needed to stock all 30 bowls.

And, with schools reverting to 11 games for the next four seasons, winning the required six games won't be as easy.

"As long as these bowls have an opportunity to get community support and have relationships with the conferences, then I'm all for providing opportunities for student-athletes," said Orange Bowl executive director Keith Tribble, the outgoing president of the FBA. "It's really too early to tell.

"As long as they're run efficiently, they should have the opportunity to prove their support."

The NCAA will announce the certification of the 2004 bowls today. All 27 from last year are expected to be approved.

Liberty wants in

Count the Liberty Bowl among those vying to become the fifth BCS bowl.

With a new title sponsor in Memphis-based Auto Zone, the Liberty Bowl, which has paired the Conference USA and Mountain West champions for the past five years, is looking to make a major leap in the bowl firmament.

So far, at least nine bowls publicly have expressed their desire to join the title rotation.

If nothing else, the Liberty wants to upgrade from its current arrangement, which expires after this season.

"We're going to take a look at what's out there," said Liberty executive director Steve Ehrhart. "It might be the BCS. It might be something else. With Auto Zone behind us, a lot of things are possible."

Ehrhart said that the shakeup of C-USA, which has eight schools leaving and either five or six joining as of 2005, has little to do with the decision. The main reasons are the timing of the contract and the BCS' decision to add a fifth game.

"We feel that our game helped Conference USA and the Mountain West knock on the door of the BCS," Ehrhart said. "But our bowl has a 45-year history with teams like Alabama and Southern Cal and Notre Dame. There are a lot of combinations that might work."

If the Liberty drops the C-USA champion, Mobile's GMAC Bowl would be the next likely destination. The GMAC Bowl now has the second pick among C-USA teams.

Changes, changes

The Liberty Bowl isn't the only game with a new title sponsor.

The New Orleans Bowl is now the Wyndham New Orleans Bowl.

Also, the Humanitarian Bowl now is the MPC; the Diamond Walnut Bowl is the Emerald Bowl; and the Wells Fargo Sun Bowl becomes the Vitalis Sun Bowl.

That's the same Vitalis that some might remember as the super-oily hair dressing from the 1950s.

But Sun Bowl executive director Bernie Olivas said the parent company is debuting a new product line of men's grooming products and feels that a bowl game is a good way to reach its target audience.

MPC is the new name of Micron PC, the former title sponsor of what now is the Tangerine Bowl when it was played in Miami.

And Emerald is the name of a snack food produced by the California Walnut Association, which was sponsoring the San Francisco game to begin with.

The Emerald Bowl will pair a team from the Mountain West against one from the Pac-10 instead of the Big East as had been the case for the past two seasons. And Pac-Bell Park, where the game is played, is now SBC Park. That's the same SBC that is the title sponsor of the Cotton Bowl.

Gets confusing, doesn't it?

. . .