College Football 2021: Ranking the best trophies for bowl games
By Shane Lunnen
2. Orange Bowl Trophy
The Orange Bowl is tied with the Sugar Bowl and Sun Bowl for the second oldest bowl FBS bowl games. It is only fitting the game has one of the most recognizable trophies in all of sports. Of course, it is a bowl full of oranges.
The oranges usually end up being chucked by players and coaches. If that was not enough, the MVP trophies are also just mini versions of the bowl trophy. No one should be suffering from scurvy.
Being a bowl with a long lifespan, of course, the game has a ton of history. It has determined national champions long before it became a member of the College Football Playoff and its predecessor the BCS.
For the 1963 game, President John F. Kennedy performed the coin toss and took in the game between Alabama and Oklahoma. Two years later the game was the first-ever bowl televised in primetime when Alabama faced off against Texas.
In more recent times, the bowl has hosted two College Football Playoff semifinals and will host its third this year when Michigan takes on Georgia. When the game is not a CFP semifinal, the ACC Champion will go to the bowl if they are not in the playoff.
If they are, then the next highest-ranked ACC team is invited. The opponent is a rotation between an SEC, Big Ten school, or Notre Dame.
No matter the two teams squaring off in the Orange Bowl, it is typically a big game. To the winners goes the big bowl of citrus.