Growing up, most of us attached ourselves to certain bowl games: the Cotton Bowl for a generation of Cougar fans was the ultimate goal, while the Astro-Bluebonnet was for the generation before that. Less attachment to the Liberty Bowl during C-USA but certainly better than the assortment of Metroplex bowls UH has been stuck in (7 since 2005).
For me, it was the Sugar Bowl featuring the SEC’s best, followed by Louisiana’s other bowl game, Shreveport’s Independence Bowl. As a child of the 1990s, I grew up with the greatest bowl name of all time, the Poulan/Weed Eater Independence Bowl. Everyone just called it the Weed Eater Bowl, as it was the first nod to extreme silliness in bowl naming. This week’s Indy Bowl, the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl, does not roll off the tongue as the Weed Eater did.
Say what you will about the Weed Eater Bowl, but everyone knew what they were pitching. Sadly, the names of the individual Independence Bowl games have trended downward since Poulan poul’d out after the 1997 game with LSU and Notre Dame.
The Indy Bowl (what the locals call it) went from a yard work tool (Poulan/Weed Eater Independence Bowl: 1990–1997) to a couple of three-year deals with a pen and pencil company (Sanford Independence Bowl: 1998–2000) to an investment management group from New Jersey (MainStay Independence Bowl: 2001–2003). People in Shreveport taking wealth advice from a guy in Hoboken? Not likely.
Lagniappe: Houston is the only school to win both the Salad Bowl and the Garden State Bowl.
The Independence Bowl went sponsorless in 2004 and 2005, although a chain of topless bars offered the bowl committee some easy cash.
“Déjà vu Showgirls Clubs would like to offer our resources to become the major sponsor of the Independence Bowl,” president Jim St. John wrote in a letter. “We believe the sponsorship will be a way for us to show our appreciation to the public for their support.”
They were rejected, unfortunately.
In the last 15 years, business has picked up for the Indy. They did three years with a company claiming to “hold the largest, unexplored helium reserves in North America” (PetroSun Independence Bowl: 2006–2008) and a company charged with operating a pyramid scheme (AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl: 2008–2012) was the first company to take the word “Independence” out of the name since 1976 (AdvoCare V100 Bowl: 2013). That lasted only a year.
Since then, a duck call manufacturer from West Monroe, Louisiana, was the title sponsor for a year (Duck Commander Independence Bowl: 2014). One selling RVs and RV parts picked up the next two years (Camping World Independence Bowl: 2015–2016), followed by a mediocre Louisiana-based bar/restaurant chain (Walk-On’s Independence Bowl: 2017-2019), and, now, a company that provides “technological advantage and operational superiority for our nation,” a description that is barely longer than the game’s URL https://www.radiancetechnologiesindependencebowl.com/ (Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl: 2020-present).
It’s been 25 years since the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl ran out of string. Today, we celebrate the silver anniversary since the Weed Eater Bowl whacked its last weed.