Bad news about San Diego’s most lower-tier, MWC-affiliated, toxic-to-pets bowl game.
Now, many Aztec fans (myself, included) have been known to poke fun at the annual mid-December showcase of Group of 5 mediocrity. Indeed, with the exception of 2010, a drought-breaking year in which a trip to literally any bowl game would have been greeted with the unbridled enthusiasm of a monarch’s coronation, the thought of the Poinsettia was always a drag for us. It was a consolation prize in which we’d play a meh opponent in our shitty home stadium and pay exorbitant bowl game prices to do so.
The trouble with that thinking, of course, is that the Poinsettia was easily the second most palatable MWC bowl tie-in available to us, after the Las Vegas Bowl. The Hawaii Bowl is too far and too expensive for travel. The Potato and New Mexico Bowls are cold weather travesties. The Arizona Bowl is broadcast online on a platform that makes ESPN3 look like NBC Sunday Night Football.
So this is legit bad news, no snark. In fact, here is the only silver lining I can find:
LOL.
Anyway, here’s what the MWC commish had to say about this:
Some thoughts on what his priority should be: A bowl game that would be in driving distance to the MWC’s West division (sans-Hawaii, obvi) in an intimate venue.
As I see it, that leaves the Bay Area, LA/Orange County and Phoenix. If something can be done to weasel into the Fight Hunger Bowl or Cactus Bowl rotations, that would be swell. If it’s about finding new partners to set up a new game? There are decent options out there to host a game; Angels Stadium, StubHub Center or AT&T Park to name three.
Of course, this will require waiting for the new bowl moratorium to be lifted in 2019, or finding some way around it.
Another potential moving piece here is seeing what happens to the Holiday Bowl once they downgrade in capacity in the move to Petco. Down the road, I could see the current Holiday tie-ins migrating to the new Las Vegas Raiders Stadium/Brothel with the Holiday becoming what the Vegas is now. But that’s a ways off.
In the meantime?
We’re left with this reality: Better win the conference, or else our bowl game is going to be total trash and no one will go.
We’re also left with this video, which is always worth a watch imo.
So long, Poinsettia! You were pretty fun that one time.
Not so much those other two, though.
KABEER THIRTY 