Stadium Legion Field Operated 2006-present | Location Birmingham, Alabama | |
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Conference tie-ins The American, SEC
Alternates: C-USA, MAC Payout US$1,950,000 (As of 2013) | ||
The Birmingham Bowl is a post-season NCAA-sanctioned Division I-A college football bowl game approved in April 2006 and played annually at the 71,594-seat Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. ESPN Regional Television (doing business as ESPN Plus, a subsidiary of ESPN) owns and manages the bowl's operations, sponsorships and marketing, including broadcast of the game on ESPN. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) also provides marketing, management and game-day operations support.
From 2006 through 2010, the game was the PapaJohns.com Bowl, named after Papa John's Pizza, who became the title sponsor signing a multi-year agreement in November 2006. From 2011 through 2014, the game was the BBVA Compass Bowl, as it was sponsored by BBVA Compass, a subsidiary of Bilbao, Spain-based Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria which is based in Birmingham; their sponsorship was announced in November 2010. BBVA Compass declined to renew its sponsorship following the January 2014 game.
The bowl originally had a four-year agreement with Conference USA to match a representative of that conference against an opponent from the Big East Conference, but the bowl's officials later appealed to the NCAA for a recertification which was granted in late April 2008. In 2008 and 2009, the bowl featured the Southeastern Conference's ninth bowl-eligible team and a team from the Big East Conference.
The game currently features teams from the SEC and the American Athletic Conference. Should either of these conferences not fulfill their bowl commitments, a team from C-USA or the Mid-American Conference will take their place, provided it is bowl eligible. Otherwise, the game will choose an at-large team. This happened in 2008, when the SEC was unable to send a team; the bowl selected ACC team North Carolina State to face Rutgers from the Big East despite the fact that the bowl had an arrangement with the Sun Belt Conference at the time and it had at least one bowl-eligible team it could send.
History
The PapaJohns.com Bowl marked the return of post-season football to the city of Birmingham, which previously hosted the Dixie Bowl from 1947-1948, the Hall of Fame Classic from 1977-1985 (relocated to Tampa and now named the Outback Bowl), and the All-American Bowl from 1986-1990 (canceled when the SEC awarded their championship game to the city).
In the inaugural game, played on December 23, 2006, the South Florida Bulls, the Big East's representative, beat Conference USA's East Carolina Pirates, 24-7 in front of an announced crowd of 32,023. Benjamin Williams scored the game's first points just over ninety seconds into the game as one of his two touchdowns on the day, and earned the game's MVP honors. Notably, South Florida had previously been a member of C-USA.
The 2007 matchup featured the Southern Miss Golden Eagles and the Cincinnati Bearcats. As with the previous year's game, the participants were a former Conference USA member (Cincinnati) and a current C-USA member (Southern Miss).
After being held in December for its first three years, the PapaJohns.com Bowl was played on January 2, 2010. As a result, there was no game during the 2009 calendar year. It was one of five bowl games to take place that day, joining the Cotton Bowl Classic, International, Alamo, and Liberty bowls. Connecticut faced South Carolina in the 2010 edition of the bowl. Once again, the unique link with C-USA returned, as South Carolina is an associate member in the conference for men's soccer.
On August 6, 2010, Papajohns.com announced it would not renew its sponsorship, after having secured a sponsorship deal with the National Football League. Following the announcement, the game was temporarily renamed the Birmingham Bowl until BBVA Compass was announced as its title sponsor on November 4, 2010, officially changing its name to the BBVA Compass Bowl.