East Carolina Football: Pirates Deserve Props for Poking Fun at Bowl Season

Who needs an actual bowl game when your college football team can just make one up?

That's what the folks at East Carolina have in mind. According to Deadspin, the Pirates are raising money for a new basketball facility by selling $50 tickets to the "Virtual Bowl," which, in this day and age of ever more convoluted bowl games, isn't a real event.

It's a bit cheesy, to be sure, but you can hardly fault the Pirate Club for its creativity in trying to simultaneously drum up school spirit and raise funds to benefit its athletic department:

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East Carolina University Athletics wants to show the college football world the passion of the Pirate Nation, even in a "bowless" year for the university. The Pirate Club is excited to announce the 2011 Virtual Bowl. Our challenge will be to sell more tickets than our bowl-bound Conference USA opponents and bowl-bound teams from the Big East.

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And what's not to like about calling out other teams and conferences? Granted, selling more tickets isn't that big of a blow to the pride of the other schools, seeing as how they're distributed on consignment, meaning the bowl games themselves retain ownership of the tickets until they're sold.

Not to mention that ECU fans don't have to concern themselves with traveling to and finding lodging in the far-flung corners of America just to see Dominique Davis and company play some pigskin one last time before the new year.

Still, props to ECU for thinking outside the box in its fundraising efforts and for poking fun at the watered-down nature of the bowl season in general.

Who knows? With the BCS seemingly always in flux, especially after the controversy emanating from the 2011 season, perhaps the powers that be will look to the Virtual Bowl as an alternative to coaches' polls and byzantine formulas.

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