Bowl season is growing. Again. According to ESPN's Brett McMurphy - the Edward R. Murrow of the bowl industry - Tucson, Ariz., will apply for a new bowl game this season and Little Rock, Ark., has strong interest in joining them before Wednesday's deadline to take part in the 2015-16 postseason circus. Orlando is also getting a third bowl game this winter, the Cure Bowl, bringing the total to 42 games.
McMurphy also reported that considered applying for approval to play a bowl game in Melbourne, Australia, but has tabled discussions until 2016.
Australia. Forty-two bowl games. Eighty-four bowl teams. The hallowed tradition of bowl season was discarded 20 years ago, and now any semblance of sanity has been blown to smithereens. It's time to embrace the gleeful insanity of bowl season and add these 10 new games to the lineup.
1) Philadelphia: The largest metro area in America without a bowl game, it's time Philly got its own bowl game. If Shreveport and Little Rock can, then dog gone it, so can Philadelphia. Working Title: The Real Liberty Bowl. Tie-ins: ACC vs. AAC Winner Gets: The Liberty Bell.
2) Buford, Wyoming: With a population of one, Buford is the smallest city in the United States (and, technically, the entire world.) Working Title: The Buford Bowl. Tie-ins: MWC vs. Sun Belt. Winner Gets: Buford's lone resident must come home with the winning team and live in its trophy case for one month.
3) Green Bay, Wisconsin: The Rose Bowl hosts a bowl game. Yankee Stadium hosts a bowl game. It's only fitting professional football's most famous venue also hosts a bowl game. Yes, Green Bay is a terrible host city, and a Lambeau bowl game would be a miserable experience. But bowls are now purely television events and the players' and spectators' misery only fuels my enjoyment as a consumer. Working Title: The Tundra Bowl. Tie-ins: Big Ten vs. MAC Winner Gets: A free pass to deny one all of the interview requests from Dennis Dodd.
4) Orlando, Florida: Yes, there are already three bowl games in Orlando. That's the entire point. We'll play all three games simultaneously on top of each other. Florida plays Penn State in the Citrus Bowl while Clemson plays Kansas State in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl while at the same time Temple plays Florida Atlantic in the Cure Bowl. This is the type of entertainment I demand as a bowl game connoisseur in 2015. Tie-ins: SEC vs. Big Ten vs. ACC vs. Big 12 vs. AAC vs. Sun Belt. Working Title: Bowl in a Bowl in a Bowl. Winner Gets: First in line at the MRI machine, and also half off DisneyWorld access for a year.
5) Barrow, Alaska: Located 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle, this is the northernmost football field on Planet Earth. If a high school team can do it, so can the Big Ten's ninth-place team and the ACC's 11th-place team. Working Title: Top of the World Bowl. Tie-ins: Big Ten vs. ACC. Winner Gets: To fly home.
6) Beijing, China: Larry Scott and Steve Patterson are running first and second in a race against no one else - to capture the hearts and minds of 1.3 billion Chinese to buying American college sports memorabilia and watching American college sports on fringe cable networks. So they get what they want. Every year. (In fact, this game already exists on the hardwood. Texas and Washington will meet in China this November.) Working Title: The #GlobalBrand Bowl. Tie-ins: Pac-12 vs. Texas. Winner Gets: All the revenue.
7) Dubai, UAE: This one has actually been in the rumor mill for a year and a half now. Except we'll bring this one on top of a skyscraper. Better bring your running game.
Working Title: The Dubai Bowl. Tie-ins: MWC vs. AAC. Winner gets: To choose a new location for the 2018 World Cup.
8) Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean: College basketball can not be allowed to get the upper-hand in the "wheels off and totally unnecessary sporting events" department. This one will be played on an aircraft carrier while on a normal deployment out at sea. The kicking game and downfield passing will be a challenge. Working Title: The Pacific Bowl. Tie-ins: Pac-12 vs. C-USA. Winner gets: To fire one missile at a target of its choosing.
9) The Great Pyramids of Giza: Instead of playing on a level playing surface like the rest of these games, this one is actually played on the pyramids. Winning the coin toss and securing higher ground during the fourth quarter is of tantamount importance. Working Title: The Desecration of History Bowl. Tie-ins: C-USA vs. AAC (or Army). Winner Gets: To exhume one pharaoh.
10) The Moon: It's a bowl game on the moon. Working Title: A Bowl Game on the Moon. Tie-ins: SEC vs. Pac-12. Winner Gets: To go home.