THE MAG.COM PRESENTS:
ALL WORLD POWER RANKINGS

WHEN IT COMES TO THE BEST BOWL GAME NAMES ALL-TIME, WE'LL GO WITH CIGAR BOWL!
[Ed's note: Not sure what All-World Power Rankings is? Please click here.]
Last night, for no apparent reason, we had a discussion with a girl at a bar about college football history. Girl opens the conversation purporting to know nothing about sports, then five seconds in she says, "Best Heisman winner of all-time? Barry Sanders, 1988." (Honestly, she's probably right.) The dialogue turned to BCS bowl projections—"Alabama vs. Florida is gonna be a barnburner," she tells us (right again!)—and then, in a failed attempt to work in humor, we started rattling off classic bowl game names. "San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl? Unreal!" She wasn't impressed. "That game was good last year. Utah vs. Navy?" Completely in over our head now, we dumped out. The topic is fresh in our minds, though, so here goes nothing on an attempt to rank some of the cooler names of bowl games all-time.
| TOP 5 | |||
| RANK (YESTERDAY) | WHAT | WHY | |
![]() |
1 (14) | THE CIGAR BOWL | Ha. It was played in Tampa, FL from '46 to '54. It's cool to have a few stogies on the balcony with your boys in college, but really, should you be naming a bowl game after a disease-causing agent? For shame. |
![]() |
2 (410) | THE REFRIGERATOR BOWL | Played '48 to '56 in Evansville, Indiana. Cue Homer Simpson: "Put food in me!" |
![]() |
3 (21) | THE SALAD BOWL | People need to stop taking concepts so literally. Cool: it was a precursor to the Fiesta Bowl, thus it eventually gave us this. Odd: three of the five games played involved a teachers' college. You think a teachers' college could run the hook and ladder against Stoops? |
![]() |
4 (127) | THE NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM NEW MEXICO BOWL | Love that sponsorship title. Richardson for Cabinet! Whoa, that was unexpected. |
![]() |
5 (899) | PAPAJOHNS.COM BOWL | We love the Internet like a guy blogging in his mom's basement, but can't this thing just be titled the Papa John's Bowl? Their website has no games or anything on it! Can't they have a pizza-stealing villian or something if they're going to sponsor a bowl game? |
| HONORABLE MENTION | |||
| RANK (YESTERDAY) | WHAT | WHY | |
![]() |
18 (144) | RAISIN BOWL | Much like this entire article, people just aren't creative when naming things. |
![]() |
28 (701) | SAN DIEGO COUNTY CREDIT UNION POINSETTIA BOWL | The saddest thing our mom said to us when we were a kid: "If the cat eats the poinsettia, he will die." As a result, we pretty much can't watch this bowl, no matter how compelling the matchup. |
| RISING AND FALLING | ||
| MOVEMENT | WHAT | |
![]() |
| EAGLEBANK BOWL (It's coming!) |
![]() |
| VULCAN BOWL (We feel bad hating on this, because it was a HBCU bowl, but 'vulcan?' C'mon! Seriously, though, it's the city symbol of Birmingham, Alabama.) |
Print Article . Email Article. Subscribe to The Magazine

- Observations from Day 1 at the Maui Invitational
- Bowden vs. Tebow and more picks
- As Notre Dame falls, Nevada rises
- Evaluating QBs, Beamer's legacy and Ricky Dobbs
- LB Fehoko looking at three schools


- Reilly: Rocco didn't beat Tiger, but you'd think he did
- Simmons: It's hard to say goodbye to David Ortiz
- Blowing $66,000 on a College World Series game ... yeah, that qualifies as a meltdown.
- Racing needs to find a way to let drivers attempt to win both Indy and in Charlotte on the same day.
- The Gamer: Mike Swick and Rampage Jackson are avid gamers
- Bill Curry brings Georgia State football to life.
- VIDEO: Kobe Bryant's two loves
- VIDEO: Dana White's life on the edge
- VIDEO: Superman Dwight -- stylin' and profilin'
- VIDEO: Ricky Rubio, on the verge of superstardom
editor.espnmag@gmail.com
Billing or subscription issues? Call 888-267-3684.
Go here for change of address.











