The Dixie Rotary Bowl was a college bowl game hosted in St. George, Utah and initiated by the St. George Rotary Club as a venue that would be presumed to be frequently used by the hometown Dixe State Junior College. From 1986 to 2005, it was a junior college bowl game sanctioned by the National Junior College Athletic Association. The bowl featured contests between top NJCAA teams from around the nation. In 2003, the bowl played host to the sanctioned NJCAA National Football Championship. The bowl transitioned to NCAA Division II from 2006 to 2008 after Dixie State became a four-year college and transitioned to an NCAA Division II team. The bowl was canceled before the beginning of the 2009 season after Dixie had not appeared in two seasons, resulting in waning local interest and the inability to find adequate area sponsorships.
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History
The Dixie Rotary Bowl was initiated as a community service project of the St. George Rotary Club. The bowl was conceived in an effort to further the club's service goals and objectives.
The bowl became prominently recognized throughout the country as one of the top JUCO bowl games in the nation. Beginning in 1991, the annual bowl game was broadcast around the world on Armed Forces Radio Network. The 1996 game was televised live to 33 states and millions of homes by Prime Sports Network, the first live broadcast of a JUCO bowl game in history.
The bowl began a transition to the NCAA Division II in 2006. Special permission was granted by the NCAA to allow Dixie State College to participate in the bowl during the transition years of 2006 and 2007. They would face the top-placing team in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference not receiving a bid to the NCAA Division II playoffs. In 2007, the Dixie Rotary Bowl has finalized their agreement to participate in the NCAA Division II, inking a participation agreement with the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. Under the agreement, each team was to send their top-placing team that did not receive a bid to the NCAA Division II football playoffs.
NJCAA National Championships
The Dixie Rotary Bowl twice played host to the NJCAA National Football Championship. The first contest was an unsanctioned championship contest between #1 Dixie State College and #3 Butler Community College in 1999. Butler pulled off an upset, defeating Dixie State College 49-35. Butler was crowned as the national NJCAA football champion.
In 2003, the Dixie Rotary Bowl organizing committee received sanctioning from the NJCAA as #1 Butler Community College and #2 Dixie State College of Utah met again for the national title - a contest Butler won 14-10.
NCAA Division II
In 2006, faced with the possibility of attendance problems for a junior college game in which no local team was involved, the Dixie Rotary Bowl began its transition to a NCAA Division II game for the best teams not making the NCAA Division II National Football Championship playoffs between the Great Northwest Athletic Conference and Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. It terminated the program before the 2009 season because it could not find sponsors.