Alamo Bowl

The Alamo Bowl is a college football post-season bowl game featuring NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams, played annually since 1993 in the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. Traditionally, the Alamo Bowl has been played in late December, although it has been contested in early January three times. The bowl has had tie-ins with several athletic conferences, most recently the Big 12 Conference and Pac-12 Conference. Since 2007, the game has been sponsored by Valero Energy Corporation and is officially known as the Valero Alamo Bowl.

History

The game was previously known as the Builders Square Alamo Bowl (1993–1998), the Sylvania Alamo Bowl (1999–2001), and the MasterCard Alamo Bowl (2002–2005). The logo of the event has evolved to reflect the changes in sponsorship. On May 24, 2007, the Alamo Bowl announced a partnership with San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corporation, and thus the bowl's full name was changed. The partnership with Valero remained place through the 2025 edition.^[2]

The game originally gave an automatic invite to a team from the now-defunct Southwest Conference (SWC). However, in 1993, only two of the eight SWC teams finished with the necessary 6 wins against Division I-A teams to become bowl-eligible, and those two teams were already committed to other bowls, so the Iowa Hawkeyes of the Big Ten were invited instead. The SWC was able to provide teams for the next two seasons (Baylor Bears in 1994 and Texas A&M Aggies in 1995) before the conference disbanded.

During the 1996 Alamo Bowl, the Iowa Hawkeyes wore plain black helmets (removing their tigerhawk logo and gold stripe) in honor of linebacker Mark Mitchell's mother, who died in a car accident while traveling to San Antonio for the game.

The 2002 Alamo Bowl played between the Colorado Buffaloes and Wisconsin Badgers was the first Alamo Bowl to go into overtime, with the unranked Badgers defeating the No. 14 ranked Buffaloes after kicking a field goal to win 31–28, completing a perfect non-conference schedule at 6-0 (the Badgers finished with a 2-6 record in the Big Ten).

The 2005 Alamo Bowl ended with one of the most controversial plays in bowl game history. During the multi-lateral play, almost the entire Nebraska Cornhuskers team and coaching staff as well as half of the Michigan Wolverines sideline came onto the field, and the Cornhuskers gave their coach a Gatorade shower before the play was blown dead. It drew parallels to 1982's "The Play", 2000's "Music City Miracle", and 2002's "Bluegrass Miracle". Nebraska won the game, 32−28, after Michigan was not able to reach the endzone.

The 2007 Alamo Bowl between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Texas A&M Aggies was attended by 66,166, an Alamodome facility-record crowd for a sporting event, breaking the previous record set in the 2006 Alamo Bowl. The Nittany Lions won the game, 24–17.^[3]

The Alamo Bowl has sold out at least seven editions: 1995, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2011.^[4]

On August 28, 2009, the Alamo Bowl organizers announced they had reached an agreement with the then Pac-10 Conference to replace the Big Ten in the Alamo Bowl. Under the terms of the agreement, the Pac-10's second-choice team would earn a bid to the Alamo Bowl. The agreement took effect beginning with the 2010 college football season.^[5] The Pac-10's second-choice team was previously contracted to play in the Holiday Bowl against the third choice from the Big 12 Conference. The Big 12's third-choice also moved to the Alamo Bowl, with the Holiday Bowl receiving third choice of team from the Pac-10 and the fourth choice from the Big Ten. The 2009 agreement persisted through the expansion of the Pac-10 when it became the Pac-12 Conference in 2011.

In the 2011 Alamo Bowl, the Baylor Bears and Washington Huskies combined to score 123 points, breaking the record for the most points scored in a bowl game in college football history. Baylor won the game, 67–56. The 2011 game was also the first Alamo Bowl to feature a season's Heisman Trophy winner, Baylor's Robert Griffin III.

For bowls following the 2024 and 2025 seasons, Pac-12 "legacy schools" (former Pac-12 schools who left the conference in 2024) continued to fulfill their prior conference's tie-in role.

Game results

All rankings are taken from the AP poll prior to the game being played.

Source:^[6]

MVPs

Two MVPs are selected for each game; one offensive player and one defensive player.

Source:^[7][8][9]

Fred Jacoby Sportsmanship Award

The bowl's sportsmanship award is named after Fred Jacoby,^[10] who served as SWC commissioner from 1982 to 1993.^[11]

Source:^[7]

Most appearances

Updated through the December 2025 edition (33 games, 66 total appearances).

Teams with multiple appearances

Teams with a single appearance

Won (6): BYU, California, Missouri, Ohio State, UCLA, Wisconsin
Lost (5): Iowa State, Oregon State, Stanford, USC, Utah

Arizona State, Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas, UCF and West Virginia are the only current or former Big 12 members that have not appeared in the bowl. With the December 2025 appearance of USC, Arizona State is the only Pac-12 legacy member that has not appeared. Colorado has appeared as both a member of the Big 12 and Pac-12.

Appearances by conference

Updated through the December 2025 edition (33 games, 66 total appearances).

• Games marked with an asterisk (*) were played in January of the following calendar year.
• The record of the Pac-12 includes appearances when the conference was known as the Pac-10 (before 2011).
• The Southwest Conference (SWC) dissolved after the 1995 season.
• The December 2024 game featured two teams from the Big 12

Game records

Source:^[7]

Media coverage

The bowl has been televised on ESPN since its inception. It has produced eight of the top 20 most-watched bowl games in ESPN history. In 2006, the Alamo Bowl featured the Texas Longhorns and the Iowa Hawkeyes in a game that earned a 6.0 rating, making it the most-watched college football game in ESPN history as more than 8.83 million viewers saw the telecast.^[12]

References

1. ^ "2019 Bowl Schedule". collegefootballpoll.com. Retrieved December 13, 2019.
2. ^ Bailey, W. Scott (April 9, 2020). "Pandemic forces Valero Alamo Bowl into waiting game". San Antonio Business Journal. Retrieved April 9, 2020.
3. ^ "Alamo Bowl crowd sets Alamodome record". Bevo Beat (blog). December 30, 2006. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved December 30, 2006.
4. ^ 2006 Alamo Bowl Media Guide, pp. 1–22, (PDF) Archived October 31, 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The San Antonio Bowl Association.
5. ^ "Valero Alamo Bowl, Pacific-10 Conference agree on deal starting in 2010 season". ESPN. August 28, 2009. Retrieved December 24, 2015.
6. ^ "Valero Alamo Bowl". Bowl/All Star Game Records. NCAA. 2020. p. 12. Retrieved January 3, 2021. – via NCAA.org.
7. ^ "Records - Valero Alamo Bowl". alamobowl.com. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
8. ^ "The 2024 #ValeroAlamoBowl Defensive MVP: LB @isaiahglaske". No. 1873226114375795180. December 28, 2024. Retrieved December 28, 2024.
9. ^ "LJ Martin: Alamo Bowl Offensive MVP". No. 1873222460570779870. December 28, 2024. Retrieved December 28, 2024.
10. ^ "Fred Jacoby - General". National Football Foundation. Retrieved January 3, 2020.
11. ^ "Ex-SWC Commissioner Fred Jacoby, 80, dies". Longview News-Journal. March 16, 2008. Retrieved May 16, 2017. – via newspapers.com.
12. ^ 2006 Alamo Bowl ranks as ESPN's most-watched bowl game Archived December 3, 2009 at the Wayback Machine, MackBrown-TexasFootball.com, January 3, 2007.

External links

• Official website