Medal of Honor Bowl

Medal of Honor Bowl
Stadium Johnson Hagood Stadium
Location Charleston, South Carolina
Operated 2014–
Conference tie-ins None
Former names
Legends Bowl (proposed)

Medal of Honor Bowl is a college all-star game not sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Primary beneficiaries of the bowl game are Medal of Honor Museum on the USS Yorktown Aircraft carrier and the Wounded Warrior Project.[1]

Background

A Tommy McQueeney, a former Citadel Board of Visitors member, lead ownership group was interested in starting in 2004 a Charleston-based college bowl game, Palmetto Bowl, but was blocked by a NCAA ban on playing postseason games at predetermined locations in South Carolina due to the Confederate battle flag being flown at a civil war monument on the State House grounds.[2]

History

Legends

The bowl attempt was revived as the proposed Legends Bowl at Johnson Hagood Stadium beginning in 2014 featuring teams from the Sun Belt and Mid-American Conferences with NBCSN as its broadcasting partner.[2]

Medal of Honor

Year American National Attendance
Coach Score Coach Score
2014 Ralph Friedgen 20 Chan Gailey 3[1][3] 5,135 to 7,000[3][4]
2015 Willie Jeffries 14 Chan Gailey 26 12,578[5][6]

The Medal of Honor Bowl was announced on October 11, 2014, by the Legends Bowl organizers as a college football all-star game in place of the proposed Legends Bowl due to the NCAA ban. An all star game does not require the NCAA bowl committee's approval as the players involved have exhausted their college eligibility. The first game was scheduled for January 11, 2014 at Hagood Stadium with the expectation of drawing players from SEC and ACC conferences.[7] The Bowl organization agreed to a five-year agreement with the Citadel for its Johnson-Hagood Stadium.[1]

The American and National teams for 2014 were chosen from a pool of 300 players by the executive director Brian Woods, who used the player profile of those drafted in the fourth to seventh rounds.[1]

College All-Star Bowl (CASB) started in 2013 and played on February 14, 2014 at Furman University and was broadcast by CBS Sports Network.[1][8] With the similarity in purpose after the playing of the 2014 CASB, its founder and executive producer David Wyatt met with the Board of Medal of Honor Bowl on possible consolidation. On July 9, 2014, the hiring of Wyatt as director of player development and the end of the College All-Star Bowl was announced. The player development director would create "a player leadership conference and coordinate a business mentor program".[8] Sam Wyche, a CASB board member, was announced as a member of the Medal of Honor Bowl national board of directors on Monday July 21 by chair Tom McQueeney.[9]

Woods, the bowl executive director, left the bowl in the summer of 2014 to launch the Fall Experimental Football League.[10]

Of the player participating in the 2014 bowl, there were 3 NFL draft picks and 64 in a camp with 7 active players, 16 on practice squads and 2 on injured reserves. Pro Player Insiders ranked all star games in September 2014 placing this game 4th.[11] On October 29, 2014, the bowl announced that NBCSN would broadcast the next game on January 10, 2015 starting at 2:30 PM.[12]

On August 27, 2015, after the NCAA lifted its ban on post-season championships in South Carolina following the State House's July 2015 removal of the Confederate battle flag, the Medal of Honor bowl organizers announced an intent to apply for NCAA sanctioning as a traditional postseason bowl game, with a tentative date set for December 18, 2016..[13]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Iacobelli, Pete (January 8, 2014). "All-ACC Whitlock aiming to raise draft chances". ap.org. AP. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
  2. 1 2 Hartsell, Jeff (August 10, 2013). "New effort to bring bowl game to Charleston faces familiar obstacles: Confederate flag, NAACP, NCAA". Charleston Post & Courier. Retrieved September 6, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Sapakoff, Gene (January 11, 2014). "Sapakoff: Grading helmets, QBs, rosters and the Medal of Honor Bowl debut". The Post and Courier. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
  4. ↑ "SC down to 1 college all-star game". USA Today. Columbia, S.C.: Gannett. AP. July 10, 2014. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
  5. ↑ Iacobelli, Pete (January 11, 2015). "Miami QB Williams returns in Medal of Honor Bowl; National wins 26-14". The Time and Democrat. AP. Retrieved February 7, 2015.
  6. ↑ Duke, Michaele (January 13, 2015). "Charlie Brown coaches in Medal of Honor Bowl". The News. Evening Post Industries. Retrieved February 7, 2015.
  7. ↑ Hartsell, Jeff (October 1, 2013). "Charleston will host college football all-star game called 'Medal of Honor Bowl'". The Post and Courier. Evening Post Industries. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  8. 1 2 Robinson, Mandrallius (July 9, 2014). "College All-Star Bowl won't be back". Greenville News. Gannett. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
  9. ↑ "Ex-NFL coach Wyche joins Medal of Honor Bowl board". The Washington Times. AP. July 21, 2014. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
  10. ↑ Seifert, Kevin (June 4, 2014). "Time is right for minor league football". ESPN.com. ESPN. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  11. ↑ Mahler, Melissa; Draft Insider (September 5, 2014). "Is the College Football ALL-STAR Game Pecking Order Shifting?". Pro Player Insiders. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  12. ↑ Hartsell, Jeff (October 29, 2014). "Medal of Honor Bowl to be nationally televised by NBC Sports Network". The Post and Courier. Evening Post Industries. Archived from the original on October 29, 2014. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
  13. ↑ Hartsell, Jeff (August 27, 2015). "Medal of Honor Bowl now a 'traditional' bowl game". PostandCourier.com. The Post and Courier. Retrieved August 29, 2015.
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