We're just a few days away from the start of bowl season, which means I get make my annual appeal against subsidized hell. But first a short message from Billy…

Tired of being an unwitting accomplice to some company's branding campaign every time you mention a bowl? Are you constantly struggling to get readers and listeners to know which the hell game you're talking about? Then let me tell you about the latest in idea-exchanging technology from MGoBlog: THE COMMUNICATION COLLECTION™.

Using our one-of-a-kind, industry-leading, low-fat, blogger-approved line of sponsor-free bowl names and logos, you too will be able to immediately convey accurate information to other humans. Using special shared experiences technology and our copyrighted, non-ambiguous terminology, our scientific logos and bowl names are precisely calibrated to provide you with information-sharing vehicles that are recognizable, representative, and syllabically economical. Just look at our happy customers:

• : "I told my friend I'm thinking of attending the 'Citrus Bowl' this year and he knew exactly what I meant! Thanks, MGOBLOG!"
• : "My readers kept asking why I'm so excited over some fast food joint. Then I switched to MGOBLOG's Peach Bowl logo; now they all immediately register that I'm talking about a crazy-off between Dabo and Les Miles!"
• : "People at my office thought I was going around saying a crappy buffalo wings chain will be a 'real defensive snoozer.' But as soon as I showed them MGOBLOG's 'Copper Bowl' logo our shared experiences helped me convey I was really talking about MSU-TCU in Arizona!"

See for yourself what your friends are buzzing about (click on each logo to get at the full-sized, sponsor-free versions):

They Call It	You Call It	Logo	Started	Payout	Date/Time
Alamo	Alamo		1993	$3,175,000	Dec 29, 6:00 PM
Armed Forces	Armed Forces or Ft. Worth		2003	$750,000	Dec 29, 11:00 AM
BBVA Compass	Birmingham		2006	$1,000,000	Jan 5, 1:00 PM
BCS Championship	Just Kill Me		1998	$21,200,000	Jan 7, 8:00 PM
Beef'O'Brady's	Tampa II or St. Pete's		2008	$1,000,000	Dec 21, 7:00 PM
Belk	Queen City or Is it Basketball Season Yet?		2002	$1,000,000	Dec 27, 6:00 PM
Buffalo Wild Wings	Copper		1989	$3,300,000	Dec 29, 10:00 PM
Capital One	Citrus		1946	$4,250,000	Jan 1, 1:00 PM
Chick-Fil-A	Peach		1968	$3,350,000	Dec 31, 7:00 PM
Cotton	Cotton		1936	$3,625,000	Jan 4, 8:00 PM
Famous Idaho Potato	Potato or Humanitarian		1997	$750,000	Dec 15, 4:00 PM
Fiesta	Fiesta		1971	$18,000,000	Jan 3, 8:00 PM
Fight Hunger	San Francisco Fight Hunger or Bay City		2002	$825,000	Dec 29, 4:00 PM
Gator	Gator		1945	$2,500,000	Jan 1, 12:00 PM
GoDaddy.com	Mobile or Empty		1999	$750,000	Jan 6, 9:00 PM
Hawaii	Hawaii or Aloha		2002	$750,000	Dec 24, 8:00 PM
Heart of Dallas	Heart of Dallas or Cotton II		2010	$1,200,000	Jan 1, 12:00 PM
Holiday	Holiday		1978	$2,350,000	Dec 27, 9:00 PM
Independence	Independence		1976	$1,100,000	Dec 28, 2:00 PM
Las Vegas	Las Vegas		1992	$1,000,000	Dec 22, 3:00 PM
Liberty	Liberty		1959	$1,350,000	Dec 31, 3:00 PM
Little Caesars	Motor City		1997	$750,000	Dec 26, 7:00 PM
Meineke Car Care	Houston or Bluebonnet		2006	$1,700,000	Dec 28, 9:00 PM
Military	D.C. or U.S.O. Show		2008	$1,000,000	Dec 27, 3:00 PM
Music City	Music City		1998	$1,700,000	Dec 31, 12:00 PM
New Mexico	New Mexico		2006	$750,000	Dec 15, 1:00 PM
New Orleans	New Orleans		2001	$500,000	Dec 22, 12:00 PM
Orange	Orange		1934	$18,000,000	Jan 1, 8:00 PM
Outback	Outback or Hall of Fame		1986	$3,400,000	Jan 1, 1:00 PM
Pinstripe	Bronx or Pinstripe		2010	$2,000,000	Dec 29, 3:00 PM
Poinsettia	Poinsettia		2005	$750,000	Dec 20, 8:00 PM
Rose	Rose		1901	$18,000,000	Jan 1, 5:00 PM
Russell Athletic	Tangerine		1990	$2,125,000	Dec 28, 5:00 PM
Sugar	Sugar		1934	$18,000,000	Jan 2, 8:00 PM
Sun	Sun		1934	$1,900,000	Dec 31, 2:00 PM

I'm not against branding. We do plenty of it, and I plan to do more. Sponsoring a nice thing so people can have it for free is one of the most polite ways folks have yet found to introduce themselves to customers. Marketing is subject to the same rules of propriety as all other intra-species communication. Polite: Your banner over the entrance to the guest lecture you're sponsoring. Impolite: making the lecturer interrupt his spiel to talk about the fantastic deals you're currently offering. Polite: Leaving your business card on the restaurant's bulletin board. Impolite: Renaming all the meats in the sandwiches after your products. Also impolite: naming your kid "Need School Supplies? Call 1-800-555-PENS and We'll Deliver!" so that every time the teacher does roll call you're drumming up business.

So yeah, my real beef is with naming rights that become a barrier to communication. The Rose Bowl doesn't need to remind anybody where it takes place or who's supposed to be in it because years of tradition have made it apparent. Outback Steakhouse annoyed me at first, but over a decade of having the name plus the smart decision to leave out the second half of their name (thus actually being easier to say than "Hall of Fame") allowed it to settle. Plus the Outback is a place on Earth; it is conceivable in the imagination that a bowl might be played amidst the gumnuts and wallabies. Bowls for causes annoy me less if they're nouns (Liberty, Independence) than adjectives (Humanitarian), which in turn is better than sentence fragments (Fight Hunger). Synonyms (Military*/Armed Forces) shouldn't be allowed. I'd prefer if newer bowls include the city name for the first five to ten years (e.g. San Francisco Fight Hunger Bowl). Anyway these are all things people might name an event without obviously having to get paid to do so.

That's where I draw the line. Adding "presented by ___" as part of the name makes it easier to ignore but still as disingenuous as if I changed my blogging handle to "Seth Presented by Iowa Corngrowers Association of America." Calling a young event the "Brelk" or "Breef-o-Ladies" means we'll never figure out where the hell it is. Letting that tire company with a name that sounds like a German salute name a second bowl after themselves when they lost the naming rights to the first is borderline criminal. Even more criminal is allowing a terribly named company to take over a well-established brand. The Copper Bowl can't claim the history of the Copper Bowl if it's no longer called the Copper Bowl. And here's where I bring up how the chicken people want to get rid of peaches:

I am guessing this is what the protests were about earlier this year.

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*Since the one in D.C. is newer it should be told to change to something that differentiates it from the Fort Worth bowl. How about "The Great Big U.S.O. Show" since it's the U.S.O. that sponsors it anyway.

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Half the bowls need to die. This year's lineup will feature 70 teams in 35 bowl games. For reference, the 71st-best team according to FEI this year is 3-8 Arkansas. Teams much worse than John L. Smith'd Arkansas are in bowl games. East Carolina and Louisiana-Lafayette will have a bowl game for a $500,000 payout provided by the title sponsor, who is a trucking company from Wilmington, Ohio. Somebody will broadcast it, and TV crews will show that one ECU fan dressed like a pirate and a few Cajun fans while studiously avoiding angles that show the 90% of Superdome currently unoccupied. And ultimately many people—especially those schools who'll be shelling out way more than 500k to settle their entourage in bowl-approved New Orleans hotels—will ask "why are we even having this?" And the only answers are "because to somebody this is still profitable," and "we need the practices and the swag and the recruit invitations so we can remain competitive."

No I don't think it'll change anything. If someone was going to have a conversation about diluting the concept it would have been had 20 years ago. I am resigned to a future in which the Enterprise Products Partners Bowl matches the 9th Big Ten team vs. the No. 5 Sun Belt team (you are not sure if I just made that one up just now). A win here is if people on this site and others adopt the non-subsidized logos and terminology.