Stadium Amon G. Carter Stadium Operated 2003–present | Location Fort Worth, Texas | |
 | ||
Previous stadiums Gerald J. Ford Stadium (2010–2011) Previous locations University Park, Texas (2010–2011) Conference tie-ins American (2014, 2018)
MWC (2015, 2019)
Army (2014, 2017)
Big Ten (2015, 2017, 2019)
Big XII (2016, 2018)
Navy (2016) | ||
The Armed Forces Bowl (officially the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl for sponsorship purposes) is an annual postseason college football bowl game.
Contents
The contest is one of 11 bowls produced by ESPN Regional Television (a/k/a ESPN Plus) and has been televised annually on ESPN since its inception. Armed Forces Insurance is the official Insurance Partner of the Armed Forces Bowl and has sponsored the Great American Patriot Award, presented at halftime at the Bowl, since 2008.
The game is played in the 44,008-seat Amon G. Carter Stadium on the campus of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, featuring teams from a variety of collegiate football conferences; in addition, the D-I independent United States Military Academy (Army) is also eligible to participate. Since the 2006 season, when the name was changed to the Armed Forces Bowl, one of the three FBS-playing service academies (being Army, Navy, and Air Force) has appeared in the game eight times (out of a possible eleven), and contractual tie-ins with the American Athletic Conference (home of Navy), the Mountain West Conference (home of Air Force) and independent Army assures that one of those schools could appear in the game every year (if bowl eligible and not already committed to another bowl).
History
The bowl game was inaugurated in 2003 as PlainsCapital Fort Worth Bowl, reflecting the sponsorship of PlainsCapital Bank. The bank's sponsorship ended in 2004, and the 2005 game was without corporate sponsorship.
In 2006, Fort Worth based Bell Helicopter Textron took over sponsorship, and thus the game became officially known as the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. The Bell sponsorship ended in 2013. During this time, the 2010 and 2011 Armed Forces Bowl were held at Gerald J. Ford Stadium on the campus of Southern Methodist University in the Dallas enclave of University Park, while Amon G. Carter Stadium was undergoing a major renovation. The game returned to Amon Carter Stadium in Fort Worth in 2012 after construction on that stadium was completed.
Originally Alltel was to assume the title sponsorship and naming rights to the game beginning in 2014, which would have been titled the Alltel Wireless Bowl to promote its mobile division, but the deal fell through. Instead, Lockheed Martin became the game's sponsor. The company has a major presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex: the company's Lockheed Martin Aeronautics division is based in Fort Worth while its Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control division is based in nearby Grand Prairie, Texas.
Conference Tie-Ins
The bowl's partnership with the Big 12 Conference ended with the 2005 season. From 2006-2009 the Mountain West Conference was signed to provide a team to face either a team from the Pacific-10 Conference or Conference USA (depending on the year; Pac-10 teams would play in odd number years while C-USA teams would play in even numbered years). As such, the 2006 and 2008 games featured Conference USA teams Tulsa and Houston, respectively, whereas California represented the Pac-10 in 2007. The Pac-10 was unable to send a representative to the game in 2009, so Conference USA sent Houston to the game for a second consecutive year. In 2010, since the Mountain West did not have enough eligible teams and Army was bowl eligible, they played SMU in the Armed Forces Bowl.
Following the 2013 football season, the Armed Forces Bowl signed multi-year agreements with the American Athletic Conference, Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, Mountain West Conference, Army and Navy to set bowl match-ups for the next six seasons (Navy would later join the American Athletic Conference).
Game results
^β1 Received a bid because the Big 12 did not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill all of its allotted bowl slots. ^β2 Received a bid because the Big Ten did not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill all of its allotted bowl slots.MVPs
Starting with the 2008 game, two MVPs are selected; one from each team.