Bowl Games and Brand Salience  Advertising, Employer
BrandellispinesComment  Saturday, I attended Houston's Meineke
Car Care Bowl of Texas, where I found myself not only in the
presence of the titular sponsor but some 77 other official
brands, from standbys like McDonald's, Nordstrom, and Exxon
Mobil to national and local organizations like the U. S. Army
and the Houston Ballet. With 68,000-plus in attendance (the
largest among 2011 bowls played to that date) and an ESPN
viewership, the venue exuded the kind of success that's a draw
for sponsors. But favorable bowl sponsorships might have even
more value in today's cognitively cluttered environment.
America's bowl tradition, presently consisting of 35 games,
confers educational, civic, and philanthropic mental
associations on the institutions involved. Indeed, some bowls
are so embedded in the fabric of their host cities that their
proponents have reasonably defended the NCAA's current "FBS
structure" against a centralized "championship tournament model"
that