Best Bowl Concepts

Originally Published: Dec 16, 2009 4:45 PM CDT

Can we please get some college football?   I'm desperate.   I don't care what it is.   Give me the NCAA Division II playoffs, the NAIA Championship Game, the Junior College sub-sectional sub region, the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl???anything.   Alas, the bowls begin on Saturday.   I give you the top 5 bowl game concepts of all time:

5.   Humanitarian Bowl:   I know the folks in Boise love their football, but I just don't see anything "humane" about sending a school and its fans to the -12 degree temperatures of the smurf turf for the holidays

4.   Salad Bowl:   Played from 1948-52 in Phoenix and was the precursor to the modern-day Fiesta Bowl.   I'm sure saying, "we're going to the Salad Bowl," sounded funny the first couple of times, but after 5 years it must have gotten old.

3. The Refrigerator Bowl:   Who knew that former Chicago Bears' star William Perry had his own bowl?   This one was played 1948-56 in Evansville, Indiana which, at the time was known as the "refrigerator capitol of the United States."

2.   Silicon Valley Bowl:   Played from 2000-04 in San Jose.   Computer geeks knew exactly what the title of the bowl meant.   Red-blooded American male football fans were tuning in expecting to see Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Girls tackling Victoria's Secret Models.

1.   Bacardi Bowl:   Also known as the Cigar Bowl and the Rhumba Bowl.   It was played in Havana, Cuba in 1907, 1910, 1912, 1921, 1937 and 1946.   I can only imagine the media hospitality room at this one.   However, it appears as though bowl organizers indulged in the product produced by the title sponsor   so much that they had a little trouble when it came to scheduling the game.