What is it about amateur athletics that necessitates the need for an endless stream of product placement?

As we prepare for the culmination of the college football season Monday night, despite the fact that the BCS is horrifically corrupt and in no way constitutes a Bowl game, a true Championship, or a Series, what has college athletics come to?

It has come to the GoDaddy.com Bowl. A bowl game named for a website company that has made a name for itself using scantily-clad women and over-the-top cheekiness to sell their product.

It has come to the Beef O'Brady's Bowl. A bowl game named for a chain of restaurants no one outside of the Gulf region has ever heard of.

It has come to the BBVA Compass Bowl. I don't know what BBVA stands for, but perhaps a compass will lead me to it?

It has come to the Meineke Car Care Bowl. This is in no relation whatsoever to the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas. Seriously. By the way, this reminds me. My car is due for an oil change...

It has come to the Belk Bowl. I have no idea, either.

Shouldn't the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and the Chick-fil-A Bowl partner up? Seems to me there is a synergy there. Branch it out to the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl and you would really have something. Don't even get me started on how the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl can get involved.

Am I the only one that feels smarter after watching the Insight Bowl?

The Orange Bowl used to be played at the Orange Bowl. The Cotton Bowl used to be played at the Cotton Bowl. Today, the Miami Marlins call what was the Orange Bowl home, meanwhile, something called the "TicketCity Bowl" calls the Cotton Bowl home. Meanwhile, the Cotton Bowl isn't played at the Cotton Bowl anymore; it's at the Metroplex's edifice to excess known as Cowboys Stadium.

The Humanitarian Bowl was played in Boise every December from 1997-2009. There is nothing humanitarian about Idaho in December.

Over the years we have seen other such entrants into the college bowl game landscape as the Cigar Bowl, the Boot Hill Bowl, the papajohns.com Bowl, the Carquest Bowl, the MicronPC Bowl, the galleryfurniture.com Bowl, the MagicJack Bowl, and my personal favorite, the Poulan Weedeater Bowl.

This isn't to hate on the vast litany of bowl games that permeate the second half of December. Sure, no one really cares about (or attends) the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl (neither of which participant was one of the service academies), but who cares? If the schools accept the invitation and the kids want to play, who am I to say that any particular bowl game is unworthy?

Some bowl games were wisely disbanded. Wisconsin played in the final Garden State Bowl in 1981. It was disbanded in part because no one really wanted to go to New Jersey's Meadowlands in December. Then again, the Super Bowl will be played there next year, so what do I know? As a warm up (thaw-out?) the Pinstripe Bowl played at Yankee Stadium is just getting off the ground. The frozen ground.

Here is what I don't get about college football. How can the NCAA decry amateurism at every turn for the student-athletes themselves when simultaneously selling themselves out to the highest bidder every chance they get? The very same governing body allows football players at a BCS game to go into the "gift suite" and pick out $500 worth of merchandise; be it a gift card, laptop, iPad, television, watch, or whatever else is in there but also says that a booster cannot buy a recruit lunch seems a bit hypocritical.

Yet, this is the engine that drives college athletics.

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