State taxpayers help foot the bill for Indpendence Bowl's pick of Northern Illin

[NewsCopy]

  BATON ROUGE - College bowl games are big money-makers, but it takes money - including state revenue - to put them on, promoters of the events say.

This year's state budget contains about $2.2 million to support the Sugar Bowl, New Orleans Bowl and the Independence Bowl. All of the funding is within the lieutenant governor's budget under the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism.

The Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, the state's only Bowl Championship Series event, received the bulk of that funding, $1.5 million. The PetroSun Independence Bowl in Shreveport received $359,160 and the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl received $335,217.

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Mike Hasten • mhasten@gannett.com • December 10, 2008

[jazzpop]

It will be interesting to see if the draconian state budget cuts that are coming will impact these bowl games. It would be truly ironic if state money continues to flow to college football bowl games when funding to the colleges themselves is severley impacted!