Branding Bowl Games: Outback Bowl

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The Outback Bowl www.outbackbowl.com is played on New Years day at “The New Sombrero” Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. It pits the third pick of the SEC vs the third pick of the Big Ten Conference.

Suffering from something of an identity crisis for decades, this bowl game had several aliases before Outback Steakhouse became the title sponsor in 1995. From 1977 to 1985 the game had two names: The Hall of Fame Classic, and the All American Bowl. Both of these names signified the game that was played at Legion Field in Birmingham Alabama.

In 1986, the Hall of Fame Bowl was relocated to Tampa Florida. Legion Field hosted a game for the next five years under a different name, and after that would not see postseason college football until 2006, with the creation of the PapaJohns.com bowl. In 2001, the US Army sponsored a new All-American Bowl for the top high school football players in the country.

The Outback bowl was the first American sporting event of this century. On Jan 1, 2000, the Georgia Bulldogs inched out the Purdue Boilermakers in one of the greatest ever bowl-game comebacks (25 points). Feathers will fly this year as the 2009 Outback bowl features a battle between the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Contributed by: Maghan Cook