[Westside]

For those of you who hadn't heard, the First Responder Bowl was cancelled yesterday due to thunderstorms that moved through the Dallas area. First of all, the bowl was sponsored by SERVEPRO. They are a water cleanup company that specializes in cleanups of businesses or homes etc that have suffered disasters such as fires, flooding, etc. How ironic that they would be sponsoring the first bowl known to be cancelled due to weather?

The good news is there was only 16,000 tickets sold and given away for this bowl. The bad news is the tickets were nonrefundable. Boise State and Boston College, the two nonparticipants of the bowl, have agreed to refund their fans the cost of their tickets so they will be out a chunk of change. Speaking of being out a chunk of change, the city of Dallas had agreed to pay $300,000 over the next two years to keep the bowl in Dallas. The company receiving the money? ESPN. ESPN has stated they will not refund the money to the city. I guess fans who travelled to the game as well as the teams are out a good chunk of change as well.

I know that it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback or in this case Thursday morning quarterback, and that this is the first very bowl game cancelled due to weather, but how could you not have a contingency plan in place for something like this? It is a huge financial investment to have a bowl. Why not plan for something like this? To me its kind of like having insurance. Sure, you may not need it, but its nice to have just i case. This bowl is now a joke because no plan was in place.