Where do bowl games get their fruit? From Wal-Mart, of course

MIAMI – With a history dating back eight decades, few games are as storied as the Orange Bowl.

But what about the actual oranges in the bowl – the few dozen pieces of fruit inside the trophy No. 11 Miami and No. 6 Wisconsin were battling for Saturday evening at Hard Rock Stadium? Surely the event's eponymous objects must have an illustrious background befitting a New Year's Six bowl game.

"They're not special oranges," said Larry Wahl, the bowl's vice president of communications. "Just what we get."

And if the Orange Bowl is anything like its northern counterpart, the game's organizers get them the same way you do. They buy them from the grocery store.

That's what the Citrus Bowl's Matt Repchak did Thursday, leading up to Monday's LSU-Notre Dame game at Orlando's Camping World Stadium.

Repchak said the bowl doesn't have "a consistent fruit acquisition format." So this year, he got those 10 pounds of citrus fruit from Wal-Mart.

Bowl games do, however, use fake fruit for winners to display in their trophy cases.