Changes in Store for College Football Games and Sponsors
The 2011 NCAA college football season is in for some changes this year as some teams have switched conferences along with some sponsors leaving long-term relationships with bowl games and new sponsors entering the fray. On top of that, last year’s policy change scrapped a rule that required every conference to have a presence in the playoff games. Under the old rule conferences that did not have teams with at least seven wins during the regular season would be able to include teams with a 6-6 record in the regular season.
Utah joined the Pac-10 expanding that conference to 12 teams, with the name officially becoming the Pac-12 in July 2011. The Big 12 lost Nebraska and Colorado. It will remain the Big 12 but will not have a championship game. Starting in 2011 the winner of the championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium and the school with the best conference record in the Big-12 will battle for the right to represent their conferences in the Rose Bowl Game.
Southern California is not eligible for bowl games after being found guilty of NCAA rules violations due to the ineligibility of Reggie Bush. The school has accepted its punishment for the first of the two year ban; it will end their bowl appearances after nine straight seasons.
Two BCS games are among nine bowl games that have new sponsors, including the Orange Bowl, which lost sponsor FedEx after 20 years, and is now sponsored by Discover Financial, which tool over in 2011 and Citi dropped out of sponsoring the Rose Bowl and is replaced by Vizio, in a contract that will last through the 2014 BCS game.
Bowls not part of BCS championships with new sponsors include Kraft Foods that will take over the Emerald Bowl at AT&T Park for the newly-named Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and Bridgeport Education will host the Holiday Bowl played at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Hyundai, the Korean car company is taking over sponsorship of the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas from Helen of Troy’s Brut brand and the EagleBank Bowl is now named the Military Bowl and is sponsored by Northrop Grumman.
The PapaJohns.com Bowl is now sponsored by BBVA Compass Bank.
GoDaddy.com took over sponsorship of the former GMAC Bowl and Progressive Insurance took over the Gator Bowl from Konica Minolta. The National Football League Players Association has taken over as sponsor of what had been called the Texas vs. the Nation Game and it moved from El Paso to the Alamo dome in San Antonio and is known as the NFLPA Bowl.
ESPN has also landed the majority of broadcasting rights for nearly all bowl games beginning this year and took over broadcasting the Rose Bowl this past season. This is the first year that no games will be on broadcast television. ESPN will also have television rights to the Gator Bowl and the Capitol One Bowl, both previously on network broadcast television.
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