The Hula Bowl dies

[KYPack]

And nobody will particulary mourn it's passing...

It appears that the second-oldest college all-star football game is done.

The Hula Bowl, formerly one of the top games for college seniors, hasn't been scheduled for this year at Aloha Stadium, according to the staff person with the Hawaii Visitors Bureau, and several agents hoping to place players in the game have been told the game is off.

The game had been sponsored by Cornerstone Financial Services through last year. Phone numbers associated with the game and the Atlanta-based company are either disconnected or no longer associated with the game. In addition, an email address for the game is no longer working.

That's the right way to hang it up.

No announcement, no fanfare.

Just don't have the game and hopefully nobody will show up.I always liked the Hula bowl and the Senior Bowl. They usually wire up the QB's and you can hear the play call in the huddle and the audibles.

Well aloha, Hula bowl.

[Badgerinmaine]

Aloha indeed. I usually wound up watching some of it every year, from Aloha Stadium with those stands with the catwalks between sections. With so much tape out there, maybe the need to showcase oneself in that sort of game is not as great as it used to be. But with no disrespect to Montgomery, Alabama (home of the Blue-Gray Classic), I think a lot of players would rather play in an all-star game in Honolulu than there.

[oregonpackfan]

With the economy hurting, I am wondering if some of the other college bowl games will call it quits. I was listening to ESPN radio interview former Notre Dame coach and current analyst Bob Davies. If I remember the numbers correctly, there are 68 Division I teams playing in 34 Bowl games.

There are 119 teams in Division I football. That means there are only 51 Division I teams that did not qualify a Bowl game!

It will be interesting to see if the saturation point has been reached.

[KYPack]

A number of these bowls could use a timely death.

Does the Motor City Bowl make any economic and football sense in this current fiscal climate?

At least 10 of these bowls are an afterthought at best.

[gex]

What about some of the more rediculously named bowls like "“Meineke Car Care Bowl”,Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl,Salad Bowl,Papajohns.com Bowl,Galleryfurniture.com Bowl"

[KYPack]

Yeah, some Bowls defintely need to die.

This is a funny list of already dead (& for good reason), defunct bowls:

1. Refrigerator Bowl
Evansville Ind., 1948-1956

For nine seasons, small college teams from the home-standing and two-time champion University of Evansville to Western Kentucky, Sam Houston State and the University of Delaware rang in December in homage to the refrigerator -- by playing an outdoor game in temperatures that simulated the inside of a fridge. The game dissolved after the 1956 contest.

2. Salad Bowl
Phoeniz, Ariz., 1948-1952

An early forerunner of the Fiesta Bowl, the Salad Bowl owned a prime spot on New Year's Day, possibly just for the giggles. Athletic departments in the state of Arizona didn't find it quite so funny -- Arizona and Arizona State combined to make three appearances in their home-state bowl, losing each time to Drake, Xavier and Miami of Ohio. The Salad Bowl was removed from the bowl table after 1952, possibly because someone used the wrong tiny fork.

3. Blue Bonnet Bowl (lost to Cigar Bowl)
Houston, 1959-1987

Perhaps sharing your name with a popular brand of margarine best known for its decidedly feminine blond-haired, blue-eyed pitch character smiling about the quality of her butter substitute isn't the best way to build a top college football brand. Nevertheless, the Grandaddy of Them All (if "Them" is second-tier bowls) lasted for 28 years of afterthought football, dissolving after ticket sales dwindled and the bowl couldn't attract a corporate sponsor.

4. Cherry Bowl (lost to Galleryfurniture.com Bowl )
Detroit, 1984-85

A two-year excuse to find out what snowpants are, the Silverdome-based Cherry Bowl was exactly the kind of smashing success you might expect on the home field of the Detroit Lions. The first game was a qualified success as Michigan State fans traveled from East Lansing to watch the Spartans lose to Army. But more than 40,000 fewer fans were on hand in year two to watch Maryland beat Syracuse. Once expecting to pay out as much as $1.2 million per team, this pit of a bowl game struggled to meet the $400,000 owed the Terps and Orange and folded.

5. Galleryfurniture.com Bowl
Houston, 2000-2005

In Texas, everything is bigger, including awkward bowl sponsorships. Just in case anyone couldn't find their way to Gallery Furniture's Web site and Mattress Mack's crazy deals, Gallery Furniture tacked its whole URL in front of the Houston Bowl, pleasing a grateful nation of accent table seekers. But as memorably awkward as its name was, the on-field games were equally forgettable. By the time EV1.net took over as title sponsor in 2003, this bowl was already hopeless.com.

6. Cigar Bowl
Tampa, 1946-1954

Designed to showcase smaller colleges, the Cigar Bowl was won in 1951 by Brooke Army Medical Center, in a mighty shutout of Camp Lejeune. But the Tampa-based game did mark an important first in college football when the Florida State Seminoles won their first bowl game in their first postseason appearance, holding off Wofford 19-6.

7. Freedom Bowl (lost to Salad Bowl)
Anaheim, 1984-1994

The yearly tilt typically featured a Pac-10 team bullying a WAC team and ended in deference to the Holiday Bowl. Fittingly, its most memorable game was a rout, when Trent Dilfer and Fresno State beat Southern Cal 24-7, dropping the Trojans to 6-5-1 on the season and costing Larry Smith his job.

8. California Raisin Bowl (lost to Refrigerator Bowl)
Fresno, Calif., 1981-1991

Renamed from the California Bowl after the California Raisin Advisory Board purchased the naming rights in 1988, . A yearly parade of MAC and Big West teams in what was typically the first bowl game of the year.

[rbaloha1]

Its unfortunate the Hula Bowl is no longer. The history of the Hula Bowl is wonderful.

Initially the game featured Hawaii and Pro Players vs. College All Stars. The games were played in the old Honolulu Stadium (seating capacity 23,000). The Hula Bowl had a streak of always getting the Heisman Trophy winner. Recently on the state high school championship game (Dick Butkus was in Hawaii to present an award), footage was shown of the Hawaii All stars playing against the College Players (Butkus, Sayers, etc.)

The game's demise began when the founder passed away (Mackey Yanigasawa) and the payment of players by the Senior Bowl.

Unable to secure the best players combined with poor corporate sponsorship lead to the collapse. Moving the game to Maui was nice for tv, scouts and players but bad for the gate.

If good sponsorship arrives the game could surface again. Its tough during this time period due to the Hawaii Bowl, Rainbow Classic (University of Hawaii b-ball tournament to be replaced ESPN's Diamond Head Classic next year), Pro Bowl (2009 could be the last year in Hawaii) and the Hawaiian Open golf tournament.

Lets hope the game returns.

[digitaldean]

Yeah, some Bowls defintely need to die..

I remember one that the Badgers played in...The Garden State Bowl.

Played in late December in the Meadowlands. Badgers FINALLY got to a bowl game under the late Dave McClain, but thrashed a much speedier Tennessee team that featured Willie Gault.

Right now more D-1A teams play bowl games than don't. This rewarding mediocrity crap is resembling more like soccer than football.

With the economy and hopefully a dash of common sense, some of these bowl games will wither and die. If we actually had a real playoff system the bowl games can be used to lead up to a national title game. The less bowls can be used a type of NIT-type of format.

[KYPack]

I was trying to think of current Bowls that outta be defunct.

Let me start,

The Motor City bowl.

Going to Detroit in the winter to play ball is a job, not a holiday bowl game.

[Badgerinmaine]

Okay, maybe it's some old Milwaukee socialist ancestry in me, but I like the chance for teams that aren't in the top 25 to get to a bowl game and do some traveling. it always seems like a great experience for them no matter where they go, and personally there are times where I want to watch nothing more than a football game where I have no dog in the hunt.

[KYPack]

Okay, maybe it's some old Milwaukee socialist ancestry in me,.

(Don't let Tex see that shit, he'll rat you out to the thought police)

[DonHutson]

Going to Detroit in the winter to play ball is a job, not a holiday bowl game.

And a pretty crappy job at that.

I would argue that the BCS has rendered 33 of the 34 bowl games meaningless.