Tuesday 5 February 2008

Who Put The Bomp in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp?

(No, its not another post answering questions posed in songs.)

Who put the 'bowl' in Superbowl?

No bowling of any description is involved.

The trophy the teams compete for is most definitely not bowl shaped.

It must be one of the most poorly named sporting events known to man.

The Grand National too - it suggests an elderly racist as opposed to a horse race.

7 comments:

Stonedog said...

According to NFL Films President Steve Sabol, then NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle wanted to call the game "The Big One". During the discussions to iron out the details, AFL founder and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt had jokingly referred to the proposed interleague championship as the "Super Bowl". Hunt thought of the name after seeing his kids playing with a toy called a Super Ball. The ball is now on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. The name was consistent with postseason college football games which had long been known as "bowl games". The "bowl" term originated from the Rose Bowl Game, which was in turn named for the bowl-shaped stadium in which it is played. Hunt only meant his suggested name to be a stopgap until a better one could be found. Nevertheless, the name "Super Bowl" became permanent.

Gotta love Wikipedia !!

Craig said...

Very educational Stonedog, Cheers !

This could be a good series of articles on the history of event names, could be almost as popular as answer the question in a song.

I think American sports are particularly bad at their event names though, what about the baseball "world series" ? What other country competes ?

OK, I'm off to Wikipedia to look it up...

Anonymous said...

- proof that the internet kills speculative debate... its like cheating at scrabble by using the dictionary.

The Bad Ambassador said...

Indeed Sheepworrier.

And to think I only made reference to the super bowl so I could make what was clearly a terribly, half arsed gag about the Grand National.

Stonedog said...

Well, that's me told.

Roy, Dublin Taxi Driver said...

It's a reference to the stadium in which the first game was held, you could do an article on badly named stadia (Stadium of Light?) whats that about?

The Bad Ambassador said...

What's all this about "articles" - be they on poorly named stadia or poorly named competitions. Its not the excellent and articulate sarah carey ye have here (to use her full name).