A Question From the Staff of the Mother Jones Irvine Bowl

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Browsing through the sports section this morning, I came across this sentence:

UCLA brings plenty of offense to the Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl on Thursday night in San Diego….

I’ve been wondering for a while how it is that newspapers got bullied into using the full, sponsored names for bowl games. I understand why TV announcers do it: I assume they’re contractually obligated to use the sponsor’s name. But what’s everyone else’s excuse? Why not just call it the Holiday Bowl and let the TV guys do all the water carrying for the corporate sponsors? Ditto for every other bowl that actually has a name. Does anyone know how and when this entered the stylebooks of our nation’s print media?

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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