A Girl's Guide to The Bowls: Super, Rose, Orange...Cereal

First of all, what the heck is a bowl? Could football players not say “football playoffs” so it got grunted out “bowl?” I’ve often wondered but never really thought to question it, it is what it is. The Super Bowl. And my favorite: the Rose Bowl. That one just sounds pretty.

I came across so much information that I decided I needed A Girl's Guide to the Bowls.

Turns out “bowl” came about because the first post-season college football games took place in the Rose Bowl Stadium. (Aha! Finally we know which came first the chicken or the egg! I mean the stadium or the playoff name.  The Rose Bowl Stadium was named for its bowl-shape design NOT because it is the host of the Rose Bowl. The tourney is named for the stadium.)

Great. So why did it catch on?

The Rose Bowl drew in so much revenue and tourism traffic that other towns began seeing the potential in having their own festivities, regardless if their stadiums looked like bowls. The number of bowls grew from one in 1930, five in the '40s, to 11 in the '70s and now, there is a total of 34 across the country.

NFL Copycats

Yeah the NFL totally jumped on that bandwagon! They saw the revenue the bowls were driving in and began calling their all-star game the Pro Bowl in 1951. Apparently “all-star game” isn’t elite enough (though it works well for the MLB and NBA). 

And you are going to totally love where the name Super Bowl came from! I know you are thinking it’s just because it’s the superest bowl of them all, but nope, it’s even better than that!

So from Wikipedia, one of my favorite sports reference places, I give you the origin of the term Super Bowl:

“According to NFL Films President Steve Sabol, the NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle wanted to call the [NFL-AFL Wold Championship Game] “The Big One.”  During the discussions to iron out the details, AFL founder Lamar Hunt had jokingly referred to the proposed interleague championship as the “Super Bowl.” Hunt thought of the name after seeing his children playing with a toy called a Super Ball; the small, round ball is now on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.”

Oddly enough, I think I knew that once before and totally blocked it out of my memory bank.

For more about Bowls and their 2008-09 girl-friendly recaps, head over to Stiletto Sports.