College football returns to downtown Phoenix on Friday, as the New Mexico Lobos take on the Minnesota Golden Gophers in what is now known as the Rate Bowl.
When it comes to bowl games — what’s in a name?
What debuted in Tucson in 1989 as the Copper Bowl has taken a long and winding road to its present name and location.
It moved to Phoenix in 2000, went to Tempe in 2006, then returned to Phoenix in 2016.
And the name has changed more often than the location. The Copper Bowl had a variety of sponsors, including Breathless, Domino’s Pizza and Weiser Lock, before it became the Insight-dot-com Bowl in 1997.
And the moniker kept changing: from Buffalo Wild Wings, to Cactus, to Cheeze-It, to Guaranteed Rate … which, last year, got shortened to simply the Rate Bowl.
The Rate Bowl kicks off at 2:30 p.m. Friday at Chase Field.
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