Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

Corporate America wastes tens of millions of dollars sponsoring professional college football bowl games. And how do I know it's money wasted? Here's the tragic tale of Osram, the German lighting manufacturer, which once sponsored a bowl game in San Anton':

[Osram] Sylvania [its US unit] couldn't get enough people, especially decision-making executives, to fly to San Antonio for the game and related events. "One of the problems was the date," Colotti said. "It was always between Christmas and New Year's. That presented a marketing challenge (to get commitments from the executives to fly to San Antonio). That's a family time."

Translation: this is a minor league bowl game, and there's no way we're spending a whole week to waste our time to schmooze with nothings in a no-account game. I mean, you can't go back to HQ and yell at the underlings, "I WAS AT THE OSRAM SYLVANIA BOWL AND YOU WEREN'T!!!!!"

Considering that many bowl games have already had two or three sponsors in their checkered histories -- remember the Hey, Culligan Bowl? The Carquest Bowl? The IBM OS/2 Bowl? The Poulin Weedeater Bowl? -- I'd say NO to any bowl sponsorship. But common sense has grown as extinct at most firms as American jobs.