Cheez-It Citrus? Bowl name drags lemons and Iowa through Orlando mud

My suggestion may not be heeded, but I’m calling for the University of Iowa to withdraw from the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl immediately.

The reason has nothing to do with Orlando, even though that culture-less city is Amusement Park Purgatory, located at the corner of Strip Mall Street and Alligator Avenue. It ranks above only Champaign, West Lafayette and Pyongyang on the list of the world’s great tourist destinations.

No, the bigger problem is the game’s name.

Not to single out Kellanova, the multinational corporation that gives us Cheez-Its. That’s just one of many outfits that crank out snack food that has helped turn our huddled masses into a mass of blobs.

Speaking of humanity, good luck finding a human being with the capacity to outlive a Cheez-It. They’ll give cockroaches something to snack on should loony-tune dictators fire nukes at each other.

Oh, the word is spelled “cheese,” not “cheez.” So, the bowl also is an attack on our educational system. But I digress.

The sodium content in Cheez-Its exceeds the recommended daily intake of 2,300 milligrams. A milligram is a unit in the metric system. If you aren’t at least vaguely with that, score another defeat for our educational system.

Sodium is essential to a degree. So is water, but you wouldn’t want 20 feet of it coming down on you at once.

High-sodium snacks are friends to high blood pressure and heart attacks. Cardiovascularly speaking, that’s not great.

When has a college football strength and conditioning coach said “We really need to include Cheez-Its in our players’ nutritional regimens?”

Cheez-Its have high levels of saturated fat, leading to increased cholesterol levels and obesity. You want to waddle home from Orlando, maybe need two seats for yourself on the flight back? Cheez-Its-a-lujah!

Surely, the Kellanova lawyers would tell me I failed to tell you Cheez-Its are meant to be eaten in moderation, like pickled beets or cannabis gummies. You and I both know, however, that moderation is merely a high-minded concept to many of us.

See snack food, eat snack food. Many of us are like lions when they sit down for dinner and a 1,000-pound zebra is the meal. You think the lions will eat some now, but save most of the rest for later?

If you do, you’ll quickly learn lions can laugh out loud. But I again digress.

This bowl name would be bad enough, but it isn’t simply the Cheez-It Bowl. Such a thing existed not long ago. Iowa State played in it in 2021, in Orlando. No, this is the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, dragging innocent lemons and limes through the mud.

Citrus fruits are great for you. They’re rich in vitamins, minerals, nutrients, fiber. They’re low in calories. They help reduce your likelihood of getting cancer or heart problems.

Eating citrus can improve brain function. For some reason, I feel a desperate need for an orange slice just typing this.

To lump citrus in the same bowl name with Cheez-Its is like calling other postseason games the Polyester Cotton Bowl, the Fascists Liberty Bowl, or the Yankees Fenway Bowl.

It’s giving a nice tangerine second billing to a salty snack that tastes like something between sawdust and sadness. Maybe it’s only right that a plastic food sponsors a football game in a city built on plastic tourist attractions.

Oh no. I just learned that the good people of Cheez-It say more than one Cheez-It are to be referred to as “Cheez-It crackers,” not “Cheez-Its.” If only that were a joke.

My reply: Cheez-Its! Cheez-Its! Cheez-Its!

All this said, it’s time for the U. of Iowa to make itself clear. Is it endorsing Cheez-Its? (It is.) And why? (Because it’s part of a bowl system/television structure in which individual universities dare not question authority.)

This is why there is a Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and a Scooter’s Coffee Frisco Bowl and a Duke’s Mayo Bowl and a Pop-Tarts Bowl and a Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, and yes, those are all real bowls.

Except they aren’t. Because there is just one bowl, and it is the Rose. The rest are junk food.

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