The Hogwash Bowl

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In the days of innocence before the BCS began pumping out commercially sponsored bowl games like a mint pumps out pennies, there were four bowl games, all played on New Year’s Day: the Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl. Raised in a sports oriented household, my youngest brother Matt and I took to the side yard of our house in Paramus, NJ on New Year’s Day to play our own, 1-on-1 bowl game we dubbed the “Hogwash Bowl”. Around New Year’s I ask him if he’s ready for the annual Hogwash Bowl. Matt's reply was especially poignant this new year of 2012.

^^^

Doug,

The Hogwash Bowl has been postponed due to lack of sponsorship until the first Tuesday in November of 2012. At that time two persons who are full of hogwash will compete for the "big prize." The sponsors (a/k/a lobbyist, bundlers, corporations, unions, PACS and super PACS) will be pouring millions if not a billion into sponsoring the competitors. The competitors on the hand will get a prize of a four year contract worth about 400K/year, free housing, medical and transportation. Hardly seems worth the sponsorship money but, there seems to be no shortage of competitors vying to be in the Hogwash Bowl. I have no doubt that the sponsors will request some small token of the competitors' appreciation should they win the Hogwash Bowl.

I can hardly imagine that it would have gotten so big. What with its humble beginnings on a side property of a house on Swathmore Road in New Jersey to the gigundous event that it has become. Ah – when life was so simple – stumbling & bumbling through the grass, leaves and dirt, to the digging up of grass and throwing up mud to gain yards and reach the goal. I can remember when a couple of young kids had this idea, a good idea that was pure and fun as opposed to what has become an out of control, dash for cash and control. Neither the BCS nor the NCAA has ever sanctioned it but the movers and shakers co-opted it for their own use.

No … I remember the hogwash bowl as it once was and that is how it will always be in my heart. 

Matt

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