The TicketCity Bowl is no more - another one that 'eluded' Iowa

Iowa can still play in a low-level postseason football game at Dallas' Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day. It just won't be called the TicketCity Bowl.

As the Dallas Morning News reported this week, the former TicketCity Bowl has new ownership, and soon, a new sponsor.

But will the game still be the same if it isn't called the TicketCity Bowl? Some bowls can change names every few years and no one cares, but there are others that should never be altered. The Rose Bowl. The Orange Bowl. The TicketCity Bowl.

It's as if they're tearing down the two years of tradition, history and pageantry.

Last season, the game had a disappointed Houston beating a Penn State team without a head coach, 30-14. Houston, which blew its chance to play in a BCS game when it lost the Conference USA title game to Southern Mississippi, completed 45 of 69 passes for 532 yards and no interceptions. Penn State completed 7 of 26passes for 139 yards and three interceptions.

It was the best game on ESPNU that day.

The year before, the event debuted with Texas Tech outlasting Northwestern, 45-38. They're still talking about it in Dallas. No, actually, they aren't.

So Iowa will never play in a TicketCity Bowl. Sad. The Hawkeyes also missed out on playing in the Motor City Bowl. That's now the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. The only way Iowa falls to that game is if it goes 5-7 and there aren't enough 6-6 teams in America to fill all the bowl spots.

That's your basic Doomsday Scenario. You're 5-7 and you go to Detroit to play in a bowl against a team from the Mid-American Conference. The horror, the horror.

Iowa never got to a Music City Bowl when that game was affiliated with the Big Ten from 2002 to 2005. But Minnesota went to the Nashville game three times. That wasn't fair. To whom it wasn't fair, I won't say.

Iowa did get to play in three Holiday Bowls between 1986 and 1991 before the league ended its hook-up with that San Diego game. I've never quite forgiven Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany for letting the allegiance fall apart after the 1994 season. If you're going to play in bowl games that don't matter significantly, do it in San Diego.

The Hawkeyes also never played in Orlando's Champs Sports Bowl during the Big Ten's affiliation with it from 2006 to 2009. Now it's the Russell Athletic Bowl, or as I like to call it, the RAB.

RussellAthleticBowl ?@RussellAthBowl

BTW,

@Hlas, we approve of your RAB nickname:

http://ow.ly/dRuoj 

#RABtastic