The Eighth-Rate Bowl. Or not.

 Your Minnesota Golden Gophers won the Rate Bowl last night on a walk-off touchdown pass in overtime, but that's not what we're going to talk about this morning. What we're going to talk about is tradition, and what a malleable and sometimes illusory thing it is.

What we're going to talk about is a clip ESPN put up of Damon Bankston of New Mexico (Minny's opponent) returning a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown, one of the evening's highlights. The giddy tagline attached noted it was the first 100-yard kickoff return in Rate Bowl history! (Italics mine).

This prompted me to ask, not unreasonably, if the Rate Bowl actually HAD a history.

Well. Turns out it does, sort of. 

Also, not really.

I say this because the Rate Bowl traces its ancestry back to 1989, when it was born as the Copper Bowl. Then, after a few years, it became the Insight.com Bowl. Then the Insight Bowl. Then -- let's see -- the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, the Cactus Bowl, the Cheez-it Bowl, and the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.

That was shortened this year to simply the Rate Bowl, which over the years has moved around Arizona four times. So it's actually the Eighth-Rate Travelin' Bowl  if you want to get technical about it.

Let's do.

Let's say Damon Bankston's return was technically quite the historical achievement, if you consider the Eighth-Rate Travelin' Bowl the Copper Bowl's direct lineal descendant. Or it wasn't, technically, if you think of it not as the 37th Copper Bowl but the very first Rate Bowl -- so far removed geographically and otherwise it's become its own distinct entity.

 I know. It's confusing.

Not as confusing as why Guaranteed Rate changed its branding to just Rate, which prompted the latest name change to its bowl game. But close.