I went to Northwestern and am a fan of the Northwestern Wildcats
football team. This is a thankless, frustrating and Sispyhisian
endeavor, and has been for the past 11 years.

And this weekend, as usual, Northwestern crapped the bed. They lost to
a terrible Indiana team, putting a promising season in huge jeopardy.
For a few weeks, we dreamed of Northwestern actually making a bowl
game. We lusted for the Insight.com bowl.

This is very different than my friends who went to actual football
schools (for example, Ohio State), who'd rather hear a seven-hour
lecture on "Wall Street versus Main Street" than have their team
suffer the humiliation of playing in a lower-tier bowl game.

It may be a moot point now (because of that bed crapping I mentioned a
few paragraphs back)... but all this talk of bowls got me researching
bowls, which brings us to this list: 11 college football bowls that no
longer exist that sound like they were just awesome times.

And, yes, I would've been thrilled if Northwestern went to any of
them. (They didn't.)

My equation for fun at the Bacardi Bowl.
Bacardi Bowl (1907-1946). So cool. This bowl was held seven times in
Cuba between 1907 and 1946.

(I can only imagine the travel packs that boosters would put together
for this today. "$3,000 for airfare, hotel, all the cigars you can fit
into orifices and your name permanently on America's commie watch
list. But, hey, that's a bargain to watch YOUR UConn Huskies take on
the Aztecs of San Diego State!")

For six of the seven Bacardi Bowls, an American college team would
play a Cuban team. And two times, the Cubans won (Havana Athletic Club
beat Tulane 11-0 in 1910 and Havana University beat Ole Miss 14-0 in
1921.) (I'm particularly intrigued by the 11-0 score, since that was
pre-two point conversion, which means the Havana Athletic Club did it
with either three field goals and a safety or a field goal, touchdown,
missed extra point and safety.)

The only time a Cuban team didn't play in the Bacardi Bowl was 1937,
when it was Auburn against Villanova. And, apparently, that game
almost got canceled, because it took place right after Batista took
power in Cuba... and the Bacardi Bowl organizers forgot to put his
picture in the programs.

In the final Bacardi Bowl, Southern Miss eagle-clawed Havana
University 55 to nothing. And that was the end of the game.

Boardwalk Bowl (1961-1973). Vegas has its postseason bowl. Why does
Atlantic City always get the shaft?

It wasn't always this way. For 13 glorious years, AC held a bowl of
its own.

Now... they called it the Boardwalk Bowl, but, looking at the
matchups, it feels to me like it was more Baltic and/or Mediterranean
Avenue. The first seven games was Pennsylvania Military College versus
the U.S. Merchant Marines Academy. After that, five of the six other
Boardwalk Bowls featured the University of Delaware.

Maybe if they'd dug down a little deeper into the community chest they
could've brought some better schools to town. Or maybe they're just
charging too much for repair to hotels and houses. And that $75 luxury
tax couldn't have been attractive to schools with rich alums. I could
go on.

Bluegrass Bowl (1958). I love this one. So some people in Louisville
decide they're gonna host a bowl game. And they are determined to have
the University of Kentucky in it. But Kentucky says no, because
they're all salty because the crowd at Cardinal Stadium in Louisville
booed them during a game earlier in the year.

So the organizers get Oklahoma State and Florida State to be in the
bowl. But, the day of the bowl, it's minus-20 degrees and snowing in
Louisville. So no one shows up. And the matchup wasn't particularly
interesting in the first place, so no one really watches on TV.

Only about 3,000 people show up... ABC says they're not going to
televise the bowl if it's played again... so it dies after just one
year.

Oklahoma State won, by the way, 15-6. The players had to wear tennis
shoes because the field was too icy for their cleats to work.

Signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours. Better than Stevie, if you ask
me.
California Raisin Bowl (1981-1991). The California Raisins were my
homeys. This bowl was called the California Bowl (lame) until the
California Raisin Advisory Board bought the naming rights and made it
awesome.

In 1992 it moved to Las Vegas and became the Las Vegas Bowl. (Lame.)

Garden State Bowl (1978-1981). In 1978, a group of bowl organizers
came up with a theory: Watching your school compete in a bowl game in
a warm climate like Florida is totally overrated. They believed that,
instead, real fans would want to to travel to New Jersey in mid-
December to watch a lower-tier bowl game.

Fans... did not.

The Garden State Bowl died after four years. Each of the four games
was played in freezing temperatures.

Whether it was the cold factor, the mediocre matchup factor or the New
Jersey factor that really ended this thing... that, no one knows.

Great Lakes Bowl (1947). In 1947, a group of bowl organizers came up
with a theory: Watching your school compete in a bowl game in a warm
climate like Florida is totally overrated. They believed that,
instead, real fans would want to to travel to Cleveland, Ohio, in mid-
December to watch a lower-tier bowl game.

Fans... did not.

The Great Lakes Bowl died after only one year. Kentucky beat Villanova
at Cleveland Stadium with 14,908 people in attendance.

Whether it was the cold factor, the mediocre matchup factor or the
Cleveland factor that really ended this thing... that, no one knows.

Gotham Bowl (1960 [sort of]-1962). In the early 1960s, New York got a
bowl game, the Gotham Bowl. And it... did not go well. The first year,
1960, they invited Oregon State to play... but couldn't find any other
team that was willing to travel to NYC to play them.

The next year they got Baylor and Utah State to play at the Polo
Grounds... but, like all the aforementioned bad matchups in freezing
temperatures, no one really showed up.

They moved the venue to Yankee Stadium for 1962 and got Nebraska and
Miami to play. But, still, no one really wanted to brave the cold for
the game... it lost big money... and the New York bowl dreams were
over.

I'm sure that there are plenty of stories that will be told about this
bowl as everyone in the Liberal Media continues to fellate Yankee
Stadium. Maybe a first-hand recollection by some guy who begins the
14,000-word story with a line like, "Over the din of musky cigar smoke
in New York's 21 Club, a solitary voice could be heard. Incongruous to
the talk of stocks and bonds, bears and bulls, Madison Avenue and Wall
Street, it echoed, powerfully, in the air. Beat the Huskers, it said."

Vulcan Bowl (1942-1952).The Vulcan Bowl was played in Birmingham,
Alabama, nine times between 1942 and 1952, and was designed for
historically black colleges.

But I feel like, if this still existed today, they'd eschew the black
college tie-in and be all over a nerd school like Northwestern, hoping
the "Star Trek" innuendo would help pack the place. (Even though the
student body there generally falls into the "too much time at the
library/90-pound Indian kid wearing bright blue jeans" nerd genre and
not "speak Klingon/read Watchmen/make "Battlestar Galactica" fansite"
nerd genre, it's still closer than, say, Arizona State or Florida.)

Galleryfurniture.com Bowl (2000-2001). During the ridiculous period
where everything had dot-com names slapped on, this was one of the
goofiest. Really? This was the name of a bowl? How could any school be
fired up about going to this? Have a trophy that says
"Galleryfurniture.com Bowl Champions" permanently in the trophy case?
It somehow sounds even lamer than the MicronPC.com Bowl.

Anyway, it only happened twice, 2000 and 2001. Then it was (wisely)
renamed the Houston Bowl. The next year, it was (unwisely) re-renamed
the EV1.net Houston Bowl. Which definitely sets a bowl record for
being named after two completely obscure websites.

In 2006, the bowl went under after EV1.net dropped out.

Salad Bowl (1948-1952). This might be the coolest name of all. And if
we were in this, it would be so easy to talk shit. "Hey, Big 12 fifth-
place team, Northwestern is going to toss the crap out of you at the
Salad Bowl." And the like.

The Salad Bowl was played in Phoenix five times, from 1948 to 1952.
Three of those years included a teacher's college (North Texas State
Teachers College in 1948 and Arizona State Teachers College in 1950
and '51)... all three times the teachers lost to a real football
school (Nevada, Xavier and Miami of Ohio, respectively.)

Somehow, this got to be a January 1st bowl.

Bud Bowl (1989-1997). I know this wasn't a college bowl game, and
there are plenty of others I could've picked from (including the Glass
Bowl, Dixie Bowl, Pecan Bowl, Poi Bowl, Seattle Bowl, Cherry Bowl and
on and on)... but dammit, I think America really wants to see if the
Northwestern Wildcats could beat Bud Dry.

Salad bowel?