CRAWFORD | Louisville arrives in Boca Raton for a postseason side dish: a Bowl of Beans

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- They used to have bowls named after things that mattered. Simple things. Solid things. Sugar. Cotton. Orange. Rose. You knew what you were getting: big teams, big players, big stakes.

Now we have a bowl named after beans.

Bush’s Beans.

And not just “the Bush’s Bowl.” Oh no. That would be far too simple. We have the Bush’s Boca Raton Bowl of Beans, which sounds less like a college football game and more like something Guy Fieri throws together during Mardi Gras.

I didn’t make that up. That is the official name. It has all the gravitas of a retirement home menu item. But look, what it lacks in substance it makes up for in fiber content.

Beano Cook was gone way too soon.

We have reached this place in college football where everything is sponsored, the trophy, the pregame show, the grass, the pylons. I fully expect the coin toss to be brought to you by Zaxby’s. Soon someone’s going to offer naming rights to the huddle.

Louisville’s football players piled off the plane Friday in their white sweatsuits. But they weren’t arriving to play a game. They were entering a branding ecosystem.

To be fair, the folks behind the Bean Bowl (that’s what I’m calling it on second reference, you can’t stop me) are going all in. The players received custom cans of beans with their school logos on them. I don’t know if you’re supposed to eat them or preserve them like wedding china, but they were excited.

Toledo’s interim coach Robert Weiner – wait, let’s stop right there. I’m not sure I’m the person who should be writing this column. Perhaps I should recuse myself on the grounds of immaturity and spare us all some kind of franks and beans joke that none of us wants to hear. No, I’ll press on.

Weiner said his players were amazed at how light the cans felt. That was the first thing they noticed. The weight of the beans. And then they asked if the winning coach would get beans dumped over his head.

We’re in a very strange place, friends.

Jeff Brohm, who once coached at Florida Atlantic and is now trying to finish a resilient but ultimately disappointing season at Louisville, was game for the whole spectacle. His wife didn’t want to leave Boca the first time they lived there. I don’t blame her. It's 78 degrees in December and your bowl game comes with side dishes.

The game? I don’t know. Both teams are 8-4. Louisville beat two teams (Bowling Green and Kentucky) that beat Toledo. But the Rockets did have a Top 10 defense this season.

But that’s not why I’m here.

I’m here because I opened a press conference transcript and found more product placement than a NASCAR race.

I’m here because I love that we live in a world where people think football needs more legumes.

I’m here because this game, in all its culinary confusion, reminds me why I keep coming back to college football: It doesn’t take itself too seriously, unless we’re talking about playoff expansion, NIL, or whether the third-string linebacker from Central Michigan is opting out.

The Boca Bowl of Beans may be ridiculous. But it’s our ridiculous. And on the Tuesday before Christmas, that’s enough for me.

Now I guess, someone pass the beans.