Liberty Bowl

Liberty Bowl
AutoZone Liberty Bowl
Stadium	Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium
Location	Memphis, Tennessee
Previous stadiums	John F. Kennedy Stadium (1959–1963) Convention Hall (1964)
Previous locations	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1959–1963) Atlantic City, New Jersey (1964)
Operated	1959–present
Conference tie-ins	Big 12 #4 Pick[1] vs SEC Pool Pick[2] The American (alternate)[3]
Previous conference tie-ins	C-USA (1996–2013) MWC (1998–2005) winner of the Commander in Chief's Trophy (1989–1992)
Payout	US$2,400,000[4] (As of 2014)
Sponsors
St. Jude (1993-1996) AXA Financial (1997–2003) AutoZone (2004–present)
Former names
Liberty Bowl (1959-1992) St. Jude Liberty Bowl (1993-1996) AXA Liberty Bowl (1997–2003)
2014 matchup
Texas A&M vs. West Virginia (Texas A&M 45–37)
2016 matchup
Arkansas vs. Kansas State (January 2, 2016)

The Liberty Bowl is an annual U.S. American college football bowl game played in late December or early January since 1959. Since 1965, the game has been held at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, Tennessee. For its first five years, it was played in Philadelphia. Since 2004, the game has been sponsored by Memphis-based auto parts retailer AutoZone. Because of the scheduling of the bowl game near the end of the calendar year, no game was played during calendar years 2008 or 2015; and, two games were played in calendar year 2010.

History

A. F. "Bud" Dudley, a former Villanova athletic-director, created the Liberty Bowl in Philadelphia in 1959. The game was played at Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium. It was the only cold-weather bowl game of its time, and was plagued by poor attendance. The inaugural game was the most successful of the five held in Philadelphia, as 38,000 fans watched Penn State beat Alabama 7–0 in 1959.

Atlantic City convinced Dudley to move his game from Philadelphia to Atlantic City's Convention Hall for 1964 and guaranteed Dudley $25,000. It would be the first Bowl Game played indoors. AstroTurf was still in its developmental stages and was unavailable for the game. Convention Hall was equipped with a 4-inch-thick (100 mm) grass surface with two inches of burlap underneath it (as padding) on top of concrete. To keep the grass growing, artificial lighting was installed and kept on 24 hours a day. The entire process cost about $16,000. End-zones were only 8 yards long. 6,059 fans saw Utah rout West Virginia. Dudley was paid $25,000 from Atlantic City businessmen, $60,000 from the gate, and $95,000 from television revenues, for $10,000 net profit.^[5]

Dudley moved the game to Memphis in 1965, where it has made its home at what became Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium to much larger crowds and has established itself as one of the oldest non-BCS bowls.

Matchup

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Liberty Bowl offered an automatic invitation to the winner of the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy, if that team was bowl eligible.^[6]

Beginning in 1996, the Liberty Bowl started to affiliate itself with the newly launched Conference USA, offering its champion an automatic bid. Beginning in 2005, the winner of the C-USA championship game was offered the berth.

In 1996 and 1997, the opponent for the C-USA champion was a team from the Big East. In 1998, the Liberty Bowl replaced the Holiday Bowl in a shared contract with the Cotton Bowl Classic and had second choice between the WAC champion and a team from the SEC. From 1999 to 2005, the opponent for the C-USA champion was the Mountain West champion. There were two exceptions:

• In 2004, Mountain West champion Utah qualified for the BCS. In their place, the Liberty Bowl chose WAC champion Boise State.
• In 2005, Mountain West champion TCU chose to play in the Houston Bowl instead of the Liberty Bowl. At-large WAC team Fresno State took their place.

In 1999, the Mountain West Conference did not have an outright champion, as three teams tied for the conference lead. The conference's bid for the game was given to Colorado State.

The bowl's contract from 2006 until 2013 pitted the winner of the C-USA championship game against the eighth pick from the SEC. The American (the successor to the Big East), was to provide its fifth-place team as an alternate if the SEC cannot fulfill the bid. The SEC was also given veto power for the bowl, and chose to use it in 2011 to block C-USA champion Southern Miss from playing Vanderbilt; instead Cincinnati got the spot and Southern Miss accepted an invitation to the Hawaii Bowl instead.^[7][8]

As of 2014, the matchup will feature a team from the SEC against the #4 pick from the Big 12 Conference. The Liberty Bowl is part of a six-bowl pool arrangement that also involves the Belk, Music City, Outback, TaxSlayer, and Texas bowls; these bowls will choose one representative from the conference each, while the College Football Playoff receiving first choice (usually the Sugar Bowl in years it does not serve as a national semifinal) and the Citrus Bowl second choice.

The game is televised nationally on ESPN, and is carried nationwide by ESPN Radio, and internationally by ESPN International.

Recent matchups

The 2010 win by UCF was the program's first-ever bowl victory.

The 2011 game matched Coaches' Poll #24 ranked Cincinnati against upstart Vanderbilt, and unlike most lower tier bowls, it aired on the broadcast network ABC rather than its cable brethren ESPN. The game returned to a December date at the end of 2010 after being played on January 2 in 2009 and 2010, the only times since the bowl was founded in 1959 that it had a non-December date. (Technically there was no 2008 game, as the game after the 2008 season was played January 2, 2009.) Cincinnati defeated Vanderbilt in a second-half comeback.

The 2012 Liberty Bowl featured a matchup between the Iowa State Cyclones (9th place in the Big 12) and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane (Conference USA champions).^[9] Iowa State defeated Tulsa 38-23 in the season's first weekend, however Tulsa defeated Iowa State 31-17 in the rematch of the regular season game.^[9] Though the bowl normally selects a team from the SEC, it invited Iowa State because the SEC did not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill all of its contracted bowl games.^[10] In 2013, the matchup featured Rice vs Mississippi State.^[11] In 2014, Texas A&M defeated West Virginia 45-37. ^[12]

Game results

Boise State and Louisville square off in the 2004 Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee.

MVPs

Broadcasters

• Liberty Bowl broadcasters

Appearances by team

References

External links

• Official website
• The Liberty Bowl at FootballBowlAssociation.org