Ed Ranks Division I College Bowl Games by Stupidity

These bowl names are not GREEEEAAAAT!

Happy 2020! I'm pretty sure that there are dozens of rankings of the College Football Bowl games out there. Some of them will likely try to rank ALL of them, which is dumb because there are way too many. Others might do the Top 10. This is also pretty useless, because I'm sure that most people will Rank the Rose Bowl as #1, right?

So, instead of that, in this bowl season, I will rank the 10 stupidest Division I bowl games. What exactly makes these stupid? Eh, it's sort of a mixed bag, but factors include:

• No legacy or history - Some of these bowl games were created like 4 years ago. Who cares? 
• Shitty teams always play in them - linked to the above, of course. If mediocre teams play in the bowl, then it's a stupid bowl. 
• Who the hell is that sponsor? - Has some Podunk company that you've never heard of gathered enough coins together to sponsor some mediocre bowl with no history and terrible teams? This is a stupid bowl. Alternatively, the sponsor's name could just be dumb as hell on its own, which links to our final (and arguably most important factor)...
• Dumb Name - This could be a dumb name on its own, or a dumb name when combined with the corporate sponsor referenced above. When it's a combination of the two, chances are that the bowl game's name is ludicrously long, tedious, or simply represents a company whose name makes no sense when teamed up with the bowl. 

Note that this ranking only counts the 10 stupidest bowl names still in existence today.  There are all sorts of stupid bowl games in the past, especially based on stupidly-named companies. Alas, the Duck Commander Independence Bowl, BattleFrog Fiesta Bowl, and the Beef 'O' Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl are all lost to history. As they should be.

10. Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl - The Sun Bowl is the oldest and most important bowl on this list. It dates all the way back to 1935, and I'm sure is present on a number of "Top 10" bowl lists. It has legacy, it has history, and it has decent teams playing in it. The sponsor is even notable - everyone has heard of the Kellogg's company, as well as their Frosted Flakes Cereal. Yet this isn't the Kellogg's Bowl, nor is it the Frosted Flakes Bowl. This is the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl. So the stupidity of this name is the only reason I'm placing this year, despite the other factors that hypothetically make this a non-stupid bowl game.

9. NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl - I have no idea what the hell NOVA Home Loans is. Google searches for it pretty much only hit with the bowl game itself. From what I can guess, it's simply a local Arizona Home Loan company. Why would a small, local company pay out big bucks for a Division I football game that (hypothetically) gets national coverage? Seems like this is money thrown down the drain. Also, this name is way too long.

8. FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl - The Cure Bowl is presumably named after some grand fight to find the cure to cancer, a very noble cause. Placing a corporate sponsor on the fight to cure cancer is pretty damn tacky in general. A corporate sponsor being some shit mortgage company is even worse. At least if the company had some connection to the medical industry, that would be something. I suppose.

Ha! A potato marginally resembles a football!

7. Famous Idaho Potato Bowl - Yeah, the Potato Bowl. Paid for by the Idaho Potato industry. Fun. Ironically, this used to be named the "Humanitarian Bowl" in the same notion of doing good as the "Cure Bowl," until college football decided that advertising potatoes made more money. Potatoes don't need ads. Potatoes sell themselves. Idaho has nothing to worry about. Where else are you going to buy your potatoes?

6. San Diego County Credit Union Holiday Bowl - Boy, this is a damn mouthful again, isn't it? Like the NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl, it takes about 13 minutes to finish saying the name of this bowl, and also advertises a local company that is unlikely to have any footprint outside of a small geographic area.

5. Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl - This is a pretty dumb name and it begs the question, "what the hell is Makers Wanted?" My initial assumption is that it's some sort of high-end bourbon brand from Makers, like a top-shelf or special reserve version. But then again, bourbon isn't closely associated with the Bahamas, is it? So what is Makers Wanted? I still have no damned clue. The corporate naming is apparently paid for by "Elk Grove Village," a suburban industrial park outside of Chicago, which advertises itself as the largest industrial park in North America. What does "Makers Wanted" mean then? I still don't know, even after looking at their website. This has to win the ultimate prize for WTF obscurity and confusing-ness. I'm spending a lot of time ranking this, and I still don't know exactly what they're trying to sell through this corporate sponsorship. 

4. Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl - This is a very stupid name. I don't really have any deeper analysis than that.

3. Franklin American Mortgage Company Music City Bowl - HOLY CRAP. I was joking about previous bowl names being long, but this is ludicrous. This isn't a bowl name. This is a bowl sentence. It's verging on a bowl paragraph. And when I think of music, I think of mortgage companies.

2. Cheribundi Boca Raton Bowl - What the fuck?

I am confused by this "bad" dog / pirate / lawn-mowing criminal

1. Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl - Gasparilla Bowl on its own is a worthless, shit name. It is an island in Florida named after a mythical pirate. Odd. Adding in the local sponsor of people who mow your lawn but also claim to be "bad boys" just takes the cake. How are these mowers bad boys? This is like in the late 90's and early 00's when everything was called "Xtreme!" Soda was Xtreme. Potato chips were Xtreme. Pier1 wicker ottomans were Xtreme. The US Treasury Department-issued bonds were Xtreme 2 tha MaxXx. If I was told the people who mowed my lawn were "bad boys," I would assume they were either career criminals who were casing my house, or that they were the "mischievous" members of boy bands who wore leather jackets and broke teenage girls' hearts. Either way, those assholes needs to stay away form my lawn.