The Top 5 Funniest Bowl Game Names Of All-Time

I love bowl season. There are so many bowl games, and I acknowledge that only a handful of them are worth watching, but I love going through the Christmas season, knowing there will be a few games each day. There’s a charm to it. Even if it’s the most mid fucking football you’ve ever seen, it’s still football. I saw the other day that the Outback Bowl is no longer a thing. That broke my heart. Outside of the Rose Bowl, when I think of New Year’s Day bowl games, the Outback Bowl is the first one that comes to mind. It’s now called The ReliaQuest Bowl. Lame. But it got me thinking about some of the funniest bowl game names of all time. Keep in mind that the quality of the game itself is not considered. Some of these bowl games may have been discontinued or renamed; it doesn’t matter. These are the funniest names of all time. 

5- The Gotham Bowl

I'm only putting this number five because of the image it conjures up. This game was relatively short-lived, only played twice in 1961 and 1962. It was meant to be a fundraiser, but it actually lost money in both years of its existence, which is pretty tough to explain. But naturally, when I think of anything Gotham, I think of Bane blowing up the football field in "The Dark Knight Rises" and anything that reminds me of those movies as a positive.

4- The Glass Bowl

This one is very abstract. A Glass Bowl could mean multiple things. In this particular case, it was a bowl game that ran from 1946 through 1949. The bowl solely existed so that Toledo could bring in teams that stunk, and they could beat up on them. Sadly, this plane backfired in 1949 when Toledo lost the Glass Bowl and canceled the game afterward. You could say the glass was…shattered. 

3- The IBM/OS2 Fiesta Bowl

This has to be the most unappealing name on this list. I had to look it up to figure out what it meant. I knew what IBM was, obviously. Apparently, IBM had an operating system. That didn’t last very long. They used the Fiesta Bowl as a way to promote that operating system. It’s bizarre because for basically my entire life, I associated the Fiesta Bowl with being sponsored by Tostitos. This just looks off. It reminds me of the time Elon Musk named his kid that name that looked like a mathematical algorithm. It’s displeasing, but it is chuckle-worthy. 

2- The Mirage Bowl

I’m cheating a little bit with this one. This particular bowl lasted about 16 years, though they weren’t technically postseason bowl games. Some of them were in conference opponents, with the most recent one taking place in 1993 between Wisconsin and Michigan State. All the games were played in Tokyo, which I didn’t know was a big market for football. The name alone is too good to pass up, though.With a name like that, you have to wonder if these games even happened at all. 

1- The Mercy Bowl

You can’t call a bowl game The Mercy Bowl and expect it to be anything other than a blowout. That was the case when this game was played in 1961. Much like the Gotham Bowl, this was also a fundraiser, though it looks like this one made money. Fresno State made sure this game lived up to its name by mercy-killing Bowling Green, 36-6.