Nov 5, 2026 · 39 min
The Onion plots a college football bowl takeover
Exclusive: The Onion Wants a Bowl Game. (Seriously.) Let's Make It Happen, America.
The project tests whether satire can move beyond commentary and reshape the economics, politics, and spectacle of sports media.
- 1The Onion’s fight with Alex Jones helped inspire a serious campaign to buy and brand a college football bowl game.
- 2Ben Collins and Pablo Torre examine bowl economics, ESPN’s reach, and the political barriers facing an Onion-sponsored event.
- 3Kenny Mayne’s elaborate rider turns a comic recruitment pitch into evidence that Onion Sports could become a real broadcast.
Don't miss
Kenny Mayne’s W-9 and elaborate rider make the Onion Sports recruitment feel like a genuine broadcast deal rather than a joke.
The brief
The Onion’s fight with Alex Jones and Infowars sets the context: satire is not merely making jokes, but confronting misinformation and testing what media can do.
Ben Collins explains how a joke about buying a college football bowl became a serious project involving Extra Points, the Sickos Committee, and other partners.
Pablo Torre and Collins examine the bowl business, from ESPN’s reach and Rusty Reed’s negotiating role to the political obstacles facing an Onion-sponsored game.
Their proposed broadcast turns sports spectacle inside out: a football in a wheelchair, an overcrowded booth, unresolved contests, handshake cam, and ejection cam.
The recruitment of Kenny Mayne supplies the clearest sign this could become real, as his W-9 and elaborate rider turn the gag into an actual production plan.
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