The Onion Is Trying To Sponsor A College Football Bowl Game

The fate of college football bowl games as we know them could not be more firmly in question. With the sport’s playoff set to expand to 24 teams next season, non-playoff bowl games are quickly becoming relics. With fewer quality teams to participate, and more television windows consumed by the College Football Playoff, the bowl games many college football fans have come to know and love could soon cease to exist.

The decline of these games has already started. With each passing year, the economics of bowl games has become more fraught. Some games struggle to secure title sponsorship. Others struggle to secure participating teams. And filling the stadiums with paying fans went out the window for most bowl games years ago.

Chalk it up to oversaturation, playoff expansion, the transfer portal, or all of the above. Bowl games are simply not on the healthiest of trajectories. But perhaps the one silver lining to come from bowl games’ decline is that some bowl games are trying to get creative. Yes, we’re looking at you, Pop-Tarts Bowl, Duke’s Mayo Bowl, Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl, etc.

And it seems like one company wants to take that creativity to its furthest possible end. Appearing on the latest episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, The Onion CEO Ben Collins advocated for his satirical newspaper to title sponsor a bowl game. And he’s completely serious.

EXCLUSIVE: The Onion has the chance to sponsor the funniest bowl game of all time.

Why won’t Big Football let them?

“We’re not gonna burn Donald Trump in effigy at midfield at halftime,” CEO Ben Collins tells @PabloTorre. “We’re gonna do that two years from now.” https://t.co/NDstpbFUUF

— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) November 5, 2026

Collins explains that The Onion initially pitched the game as The Sickos Bowl, paying homage to the online community of college football fans that will watch any game no matter the quality of the teams participating. That pitch, he explains, was dead on arrival due to the origins of the “Sicko” mascot being a bit of a creep. But The Onion Bowl, that’s still something Collins wanted to make happen.

The idea was a bowl game, but with gags. “The hat shuffle with no resolution. Handshake cam: kiss cam, but for formal handshakes. Counter-programming the jumbotron; for those game attendees that aren’t super into football, we play the entirety of Jurassic Park or some other movie on one of the jumbotrons at a low volume,” Collins explained.

ESPN, which controls the vast majority of bowl inventory through its ESPN Events arm, initially shot down The Onion’s attempt at sponsoring the Frisco Bowl at the Dallas Cowboys’ new practice facility, implying that the bowl organizers would not be interested. Instead, ESPN pointed The Onion towards the New Orleans Bowl at the Superdome. Unfortunately for The Onion, after receiving various other approvals, the New Orleans Sports Foundation rejected the bid, which Collins said was in the mid six-figures.

Now, Torre is looking to leverage his connections to help The Onion land its dream bowl sponsorship, specifically pointing towards the inaugural Puerto Rico Bowl as a possibility.

And the cherry on top? Torre played matchmaker to find The Onion a broadcaster to call the game: former SportsCenter star Kenny Mayne. Mayne, of course, has a bit of a tendency towards satire himself and would be a perfect fit for The Onion Bowl.

So we, and every other college football fan out there, are urging the powers that be to do what’s right here. Let The Onion have their bowl game. We can all but guarantee more people will watch The Onion Bowl than a bowl sponsored by some life insurance company no one has ever heard of. Make it happen!

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