Cheez-It, Citrus are in the same big bowl of filler

It’s lazy to start to start an essay by asking “What if I’d told you back in ...” about something you obviously didn’t see coming.

But hey, you knew you weren’t getting Mark Twain here.

So, what if I’d told you back in August that Iowa State would play Clemson in the football postseason while Iowa would face Kentucky?

Would you have said that meant the Cyclones would make the College Football Playoff and the Hawkeyes would end up in the Music City Bowl they were deprived of a year ago?

Why, yes, you would.

Clemson made the previous six CFPs and won national-titles in two of them. The Tigers are slumming it this season, playing Iowa State in Orlando’s Cheez-It Bowl.

Kentucky was 5-6 last year and 49-50 under Mark Stoops entering this season. Yet, the Wildcats matched Clemson’s 9-3 mark and are playing Iowa in Orlando’s Citrus Bowl.

Bear Bryant fled Kentucky in 1953 because he felt basketball would always rule there. He didn’t become Bear Bryant by not being able to read the room.

There were just seven bowl games to cap the 1953 college football season compared to this season’s 42. In Orlando, East Texas State Teachers College tied Arkansas State 7-7 in the Tangerine Bowl, ending East Texas State’s 27-game winning streak.

Disney World didn’t exist then. So East Texas State missed out on that, too.

The Citrus Bowl is considered a few rungs higher on the bowl ladder than the Cheez-It. The reality is all bowls from the Citrus all the way down to the one in Detroit rank the same in enduring cosmic importance. Which is to say they don’t have any.

Quick, who played in last season’s Citrus Bowl? Or Cheez-It Bowl? Or the Collins Aerospace Let’s Live on Mars Bowl?

A serious note: A piece of citrus is good for you. A Cheez-It? Probably not so much.

A more-serious note: Cheez-It did $912 mlllion in sales in 2020.

At least the Citrus and Cheez-It have teams with winning records. Twenty-one 6-6 teams are going to bowls. Most beat FCS teams like Colgate, Monmouth and Hampton to get that sixth win and bowl-eligibility.

West Virginia is 6-6 and bowl-bound thanks largely to beating Long Island. It hasn’t been verified, but West Virginia reportedly is trying to get Nantucket and Kennebunkport on future schedules.

Hawaii played 13 regular-season games and went 6-7, but is being allowed to play in the Hawaii Bowl because well, the poor wretches who live in Hawaii deserve to have one nice thing happen to them.

The bowls are all television programming, and quite well-watched, and that ends the argument that there are too many of them. Plus, bowls that aren’t located in tourism sites like Orlando bring visitors and their money to places that ordinarily wouldn’t be welcoming them in late December.

Have you ever heard anyone not going to a bowl say “Excuse me, I must now leave home so I can spend a few winter days in Shreveport surrounded by people dressed the same as me?”

It’s 24 years ago, but I still remember chipping ice off a windshield after picking up a rental car in El Paso, wondering why the game I was there to cover was called the Sun Bowl.

By the way, the Sun Bowl is now called the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl. This stuff all means so very, very much.

Tony is the mascot of Frosted Flakes, which were called Sugar Frosted Flakes in 1983. Apparently, sugar had fallen out of favor. I’m told you can still find it in certain foods if you look hard enough.

Anyway, Iowa and Iowa State are going to Orlando. Later this month, I’ll head to a city where Mickey Mouse is all powerful to cover a bowl named for a cheesy snack. I smell a rat.

The Cheez-It Bowl was the Camping World Bowl when Iowa State played in it two years ago. The Camping World Bowl was at Camping World Stadium, so there was a nice symmetry there.

Before it was the Camping World Bowl and then the Cheez-It Bowl, it was the Russell Athletic Bowl, the Champs Sports Bowl, the Mazda Tangerine Bowl, the MicronPC.com Bowl, the Carquest Bowl and the Blockbuster Bowl.

Blockbuster is gone, but Tony the Tiger will be 70 years old next year and prowling a football stadium in El Paso. To sell cereal.

Not even Mark Twain could have made this up. Why would he? He could write.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com