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College bowl games are in such abundant supply that there are not enough decent teams to go around.

Two teams with losing records, 12 teams with .500 records and 15 that were one game over .500 got invited to one postseason party or another because … well, because. TV wants bowls. The bowls need teams. Sponsors need bang for their buck. And we need to poke fun at them for their lunacy and grandiosity.

Consider The Cure Bowl. What, precisely, was the illness? And will it be caused by watching San Jose State (5-7 after losing three of its last four) and Georgia Southern (8-4, loser of two of its last three)?

You may wonder about the R +L Carriers New Orleans Bowl? Who carries Rs and Ls? Do they drop off the Rs in one place and the Ls elsewhere?

There’s the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, which features a potato far more famous than the bowl. It will be played Dec. 22, on the same day as the Marmot Boca Raton Bowl. That’s Marmot, not marmoset. Marmot sells outdoor performance gear; marmosets are a New World species of monkeys.

Once upon a time, about the longest name a game had hung on it was the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl (the old Bluebonnet Bowl was moved to the Houston Astrodome, where no bluebonnets ever grew). Now we can choke on the Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl and the San Diego County Credit Poinsettia Bowl. As if we could even spell Poinsettia Bowl without all of that other stuff in front of it.

The University of Miami, which fired its coach during the season, takes its 8-4 record to the Hyundai Sun Bowl. Yay, Christmas in El Paso. It’s the stuff of carols and legend. The Hurricanes hoped to get invited to the New Era Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, so they’d have their holiday in New York. Sorry, lads. And how about Navy? The Midshipmen, as a reward for their splendid 9-2 season, get to go nowhere. They’re in the Military Bowl Presented by Northrup Grumman … in their own stadium in Annapolis, Md., on Dec. 28.

Well, there’s no place like home for the holidays.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .