By MIKE KESSINGER

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mkessinger@gctelegram.com

If all the games in the Bowl Championship Series were played in one place, Memorial Stadium would have been known as heaven to football fans Thursday.

There was the Sugar, Orange, Rose and Cotton Bowls all being played on the home turf of the Garden City High School Buffaloes. There was also a Toilet Bowl.

Toilet Bowl?

So the last bowl name kind of takes away from the validity of the actual big-name bowl games being played in Garden City, but still, there was football being played on the field. Just not the kind fans are use to seeing on usual Friday nights. Instead, the evening was used for the 2008 Garden City football team to have a little fun after the four-day Buffalo football camp ended Thursday morning.

"This was just kind of for fun," Garden City head coach Mike Smith said. "This is the third year. We kind of asked if they wanted to do it every year, and they insist that they have fun doing it. Let them all have a little fun, let them all catch the ball."

The game was 7-on-7, which is a form of playground football with no linemen blocking, just a quarterback looking for six receivers among seven defenders. With more than 100 players in the camp, there were 10 teams formed with each group named a Big 12 conference school. Smith and assistant coach John Ford sat in the press box keeping count of the score and giving updates over the public address system.

"The players enjoy it," Smith said. "Linemen get a chance to catch the ball and throw it. It gets pretty interesting. Every year I wouldn't have guessed that the team that won the tournament would have been the one to win it."

Broken up into two round robin pools to play the first five games, the team records decided which bowl games the teams played in. Two games were going on at a time with 40 yards to score. Points also were being scored not just by touchdowns, but for holding the offense scoreless on a possession, interceptions and sacks. By the end of the three hours of games, the Colorado Buffaloes team won the national championship Sugar Bowl 9-1 over the Missouri Tigers.

A name so calmly referred to Kansas State-Kansas games in the 1980s, the Toilet Bowl didn't consist of either Wildcat or Jayhawk team. Texas A&M claimed the Toilet Bowl beating Oklahoma 4-1. K-State knocked off KU in the second lowest game, the Cotton Bowl, 16-14. The Texas Tech team claimed the Rose Bowl against Texas and Nebraska beat Oklahoma State in the Orange Bowl.

As the winners, the Colorado team and their coach Bobby Ray Hurd will be treated to a dinner.

With the camp occupied by more than 100 players, Smith was pleased with the outcome of the camp. The four days gave the coaches the kind of look they were hoping to get from seeing them for the first time this summer.

"We feel like we found a lot of people who will be competitive," Smith said. "We don't necessarily have someone like Brodrick (Smith). Brodrick was pretty special with 1,000 yards rushing. We have some holes to fill on the defensive side. We're just trying to find what our roles are right now."

The Buffaloes return six offensive starters and eight on the defensive side from a team that finished 4-5. The goal Smith and his staff will be working toward when practice starts is that Garden City will have enough depth on both sides to not have to play too many players both ways.

"With those kinds of numbers it looks pretty good," Smith said. "We have a lot of positions that kids are battling for. We have a lot of time between now and the first game against Ulysses."

Garden City's season will start Sept. 5 on the Tigers home field. Ulysses enters the season after four-straight appearances in the Class 4A sub-state title game.