The GenericCorporateSponsor.com Bowl

Because I work in the sports world, go to a lot of games and am engaged to a sponsorship and marketing expert, I've become somewhat of an advertising snob.  In fact, my first true post on Caught Looking was about how Citi Field's outfield is completely plastered with ads, and how the Yellow Pages-esque view takes away from the ballpark's otherwise beautiful look and feel.  This isn't to say I'm some sort of old fashioned geezer who wants all corporate references removed from my sports - I understand that corporate affiliations are a vital part of each professional sports team's business, and find that in some instances sponsors can actually add value to the game experience.  All of the random sponsored college bowl games that have cropped up over the last several years, however, are not examples of sponsors adding value to the sporting events they attach their names and logos too.  In an effort to grow revenues, the NCAA has over expanded its bowl schedule and lessened the significance of making it to the college football postseason.

Last night I tuned in to ESPN for some of the Belk Bowl between Duke and Cincinnati, and I learned a couple of things.  First, I learned that Belk is more than the name of a random college bowl game played in Charlotte, NC - it's actually a chain of department stores with locations throughout the southeast.  Interestingly, I ddn't learn this from watching the Belk Bowl - not once did anyone mention what Belk was or why they were sponsoring one of the NCAA's 35 college bowl games.  In my Googling spree I also learned that while Belk does have over 50 locations in Duke's home state of North Carolina, they don't exist anywhere in Ohio and only have a few locations in border state Kentucky.  Why the Belk Bowl wouldn't include two teams from within Belk's regional footprint (the company has 16 states with stores to choose from), is beyond me.  Last, I looked up the Belk Bowl on Wikipedia and found out that  the game, which matches the ACC's #5 team against the Big East's #3 team, has changed names three times since its inception in 2002.  Originally founded as the Queen City Bowl, the game rotated through two other sponsors (Continental Tires and Meineke Car Care) before shifting to Belk for the first time last year.

A small crowd watched Cincinnati toak home the 2012 Belk Bowl title in Charlotte.

I'm picking on the Belk Bowl here because it's a game I actually watched, but a similar story is true for all of the NCAA's fringe bowl games.  They all feature random sponsors that are in no way integrated into the flow of the game, with no logical relationship to the teams playing or geographic regions represented.  There's zero fan recognition because the title sponsors change so often, the games are rarely memorable and there are too many of them to keep track of.  To top it all off, different bowls have sponsors that are arguably competitors - like Little Caesars and Chick-Fil-A, for example - that makes things particularly confusing.  The NCAA has created a college bowl landscape that is littered with random corporate tie-ins, which has made it very hard to create any sense of history or tradition.  Unlike NCAA basketball's post-season tournament, which is filled with memorable moments throughout its history, few of college football's bowls are thought of for more than their funny names.

What does it mean to win the Belk Bowl?  Is this something for Cincinnati to be proud of, or should they be disappointed that they're not playing in a bigger postseason game?  Should Duke be content with breaking the school's 18-year-long bowl-less streak thanks to the Belk Bowl invite?  Because of the inflated number of college bowl games and the inconsistency of the matchups from year to year, it's nearly impossible for players, coaches or fans to truly weigh the significance (if any) of a lower tier bowl game.  College football's current bowl structure leaves every bowl champion (except the national champion) with an unsatisfying feel of "what could have been," and despite the photo above I can't believe that Cincinnati is overjoyed with the way its season ended.  Unfortunately, if companies like Belk, AdvoCare and TaxSlayer.com keep putting up money for bowl title sponsorships, we won't be getting rid of these irrelevant postseason games in favor of a better system any time soon.