The Bowl Game That Lost Money for Charity

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These days, there are more bowls than eligible teams. Then you have opt-outs and Notre Dame being salty. A new tradition has emerged, with people yearning for the good ol’ days of bowl season. The thing is, there were no good ol’ days when it came to college football bowls. The bad stuff is there; it’s just been forgotten about.

Allow me to enter Exhibit A into the proceedings: the Gotham Bowl. This short-lived contest in the early 1960s featured amazing highlights, such as not playing for a year because no team was interested, a team refusing to leave the airport for NYC until they received a check, and losing money for the March of Dimes charity.

Good ol’ days of Bowl Season, indeed. Here we have the story of the Gotham Bowl. A true college football disaster.

The Gotham Bowl is approved in January 1960, and organizers proceed to immediately throw shade on the Rose Bowl, saying their game is going to be what the Pasadena event used to be.

Unless there were some secret Rose Bowls that were both freezing or poorly attended, the Gotham Bowl never comes close to resembling its West Coast counterpart and even calling it a counterpart is supremely generous.

The date tentatively scheduled for December 10th of that year with a five-year lease signed with Yankee Stadium. During a kickoff event in March, the Gotham Bowl’s executive director Bob Ready openly opined, wouldn’t it be just dandy if the game featured Notre Dame and Syracuse. Shoot your shot, I guess.

The following years would be a total mess, ending with the Gotham Bowl having lost money for the March of Dimes.

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