34 Bowl Games

The NCAA announced there will be 34 bowl games this season. Do we need 34 bowl games? I thought 30 was more than enough. When are these 2 new ones going to take place? Thanksgiving weekend? What did the Rocky Mountain Bowl do to not get approved?

All the bowls from last year applied and were approved. Three new bowls submitted applications: Congressional Bowl in Washington, D.C., St. Petersburg Bowl in St. Petersburg, Florida, Rocky Mountain Bowl in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Congressional Bowl and St. Petersburg Bowl both got approved. I’m sure they will be changed to the Yournamehere Bowl soon enough. I should pass the hat in hopes for the Borderline Fantastic Bowl.

The bowl in DC is curious to me. There aren’t many cold weather bowls that are outdoors. I can only think of the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl in Boise. I’ve always wanted a bowl game in Philadelphia. The closest we got was the Patriot Bowl in Valley Forge, but that was on Coach (so it was fictional). That got me thinking, what would be a good name for a Philly bowl game?

Congressional Bowl
According to this article from the Washtington Post, the game will take place on December 20th. The game will likely feature Navy (assuming they are bowl eligible) against and ACC team (the 9th ACC team). It will be at RFK or Nationals Park. Not sure why not Fed Ex Field. Perhaps because FedEx Field is in Maryland, not DC. I really dislike games at baseball only stadiums, the Emerald Bowl at AT&T Park being my least favorite. So I’m hoping for RFK. Apparently it will be the first college football game held in DC. That doesn’t seem right to me, at some point in the last 100 years a game must have been played.

St. Petersburg Bowl
Again a bowl game at a baseball stadium, Tropicana Field. There is an official site for the game. It doesn’t give much information except that the Big East and Conference USA are involved. I couldn’t find any information about which selection from those conferences would be headed to St. pete. This article says that the game will be on December 20th (same as the Congressional Bowl) at 6:30 on ESPN2.

Rocky Mountain Bowl
This bowl got rejected but I was curious to see if I could find what they had planned or why it wasn’t selected. This article states that the game would have been a Mountain West team against a WAC team. The only reasoning mentioned is that the NCAA doesn’t want more spots than eligible teams. Of course they would rather have a MWC or WAC team left at home rather than a Big East or ACC team that had a lousy year.