College Bowl Participants Score with Tech Gifts

Their universities will score millions of $$$ as they play in this season's bowl games, but the players, who we know (!) of course have no salaries, will score ... perhaps not big, but at least something with gift packs containing - in many cases - a lot of tech.

For example, despite shortages of Nintendo Wiis, some bowl games managed to get some for their gift packs --- not easy because of the sheer number of players in each game. Some will get Xbox 360s or iPod Touches. Each bowl game can spend $500 on each player. You can imagine how much is spent overall when you think of how many obscure and inconsequential bowl games there are.

Here's a partial list of the tech booty.

Nintendo Wiis: The Holiday, Allstate BCS National Championship and Valero Alamo bowls managed to get these for their participants. Let no one rain on their parades as despite the fact many can't get their own Wiis, these guys are basically getting nothing compared to their colleges --- and very few of them will end up in the NFL.

Xbox 360: The Insight Bowl.

$400 Best Buy Gift Certificates: The Champs Sports Bowl and the Capital One Bowl are giving their players a choice, as they get to buy whatever they want with these gift certificates. Hopefully they won't try to price match something they found online.

Vizio 20-inch LCD HDTVs: Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.

Oakley Thump: The Konica Minolta Gator Bowl.

Sony Bravia Home Theatre System: The Rose Bowl presented by Citi (ugh at that name)

Garmin navigation system: Meineke Car Care Bowl.

iPod Touch: Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl.

It's not an exhaustive list, but here's a question: is anyone besides me annoyed at how the bowl games have incredibly long names with all the sponsors? I long for the days when it was just the Cotton Bowl, the Rose Bowl, etc. etc.