Liberty Bowl


The Liberty Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in late December or early January since 1959. For its first five years, it was played at Philadelphia Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia before being held at Atlantic City Convention Hall in 1964. Since 1965, the game has been held at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, Tennessee. Because of the scheduling of the bowl game near the end of the calendar year, no game was played during calendar years 2008 or 2015, while two games were played in calendar years 2010 and 2016.
Since 2004, the game has been sponsored by Memphis-based auto parts retailer AutoZone and officially known as the AutoZone Liberty Bowl. Previous sponsors include St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and AXA Financial.

History

A. F. "Bud" Dudley, a former Villanova athletic director, created the Liberty Bowl in Philadelphia in 1959. The game was played at Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium. It was the only cold-weather bowl game of its time, and was plagued by poor attendance. The first game was the most successful of the five held in Philadelphia, as 38,000 fans watched Penn State beat Alabama, 7–0, in the bowl's inaugural edition.
A group of Atlantic City businessmen convinced Dudley to move his game from Philadelphia to Atlantic City's Convention Hall for 1964 and guaranteed Dudley $25,000. It would be the first major bowl game played indoors. AstroTurf was still in its developmental stages and was unavailable for the game. Convention Hall was equipped with a grass surface with of burlap underneath it on top of concrete. To keep the grass growing, artificial lighting was installed and kept on 24 hours a day. The entire process cost about $16,000. End zones were only 8 yards long, rather than the regulation 10 yards. 6,059 fans saw Utah rout West Virginia, 32–6. Dudley was paid $25,000 from Atlantic City businessmen, $60,000 from the gate, and $95,000 from television revenues, and cleared $10,000 net profit.
In 1965, Dudley moved the game to Memphis, Tennessee, where it made its home at Memphis Memorial Stadium to much larger crowds; the venue was renamed as Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in December 1975. Having been played every college football season since 1959, the game has established itself as one of the oldest non-New Year's Six bowls.

Matchup

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Liberty Bowl offered an automatic invitation to the winner of the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy, if that team was bowl eligible. Due to the limited success of service academy football during this era, the only academy to appear in the Liberty Bowl as a result of this arrangement was Air Force, which appeared in four consecutive games, 1989–1992.
Beginning in 1996, the Liberty Bowl began an affiliation with the newly launched Conference USA, offering its champion an automatic bid. Beginning in 2005, the winner of C-USA was determined by the newly created C-USA championship game. The winner of that game was customarily offered the bowl berth from 2005 to 2013.
In 1996 and 1997, the opponent for the C-USA champion was a team from the Big East. In 1998, the Liberty Bowl replaced the Holiday Bowl in a shared contract with the Cotton Bowl and had second choice between the WAC champion and a team from the SEC. From 1999 to 2005, the opponent for the C-USA champion was the Mountain West champion. There were two exceptions:
In 1999, the Mountain West Conference did not have an outright champion, as three teams tied for the conference lead. The conference's bid for the game was given to Colorado State.
The bowl's contract from 2006 until 2013 pitted the winner of the C-USA championship game against the eighth pick from the SEC. The American was to provide its fifth-place team as an alternate if the SEC could not provide a team. The SEC was also given veto power for the bowl, and elected to use it in 2011 to block C-USA champion Southern Miss from playing Vanderbilt; instead, Cincinnati got the spot and Southern Miss accepted an invitation to the 2011 Hawaii Bowl instead.
Since 2014, the matchup features a team from the SEC against the fourth pick from the Big 12 Conference. The Liberty Bowl is part of a six-bowl SEC pool arrangement that also involves the Duke's Mayo, Music City, Outback, Gator, and Texas bowls; these bowls will choose one representative from the conference each, while the College Football Playoff receiving first choice and the Citrus Bowl second choice.
The game is televised nationally on ESPN, and is carried nationwide by ESPN Radio, and internationally by ESPN International.

Recent matchups of note

The 2010 win by UCF was the program's first-ever bowl victory.
The 2011 game matched Coaches' Poll 24th-ranked Cincinnati against upstart Vanderbilt, and unlike most lower tier bowls, it aired on the broadcast network ABC rather than its cable brethren ESPN. Cincinnati defeated Vanderbilt in a second-half comeback.
The 2012 Liberty Bowl featured an unusual rematch of a regular season game between the Iowa State Cyclones and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane. Iowa State had defeated Tulsa, 38–23, in the season's first weekend, however Tulsa defeated Iowa State, 31–17, in the Liberty Bowl. Though the bowl normally selects a team from the SEC, it invited Iowa State because the SEC did not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill all of its contracted bowl games.

Game results

The first five editions were played in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The 1964 game was played in Atlantic City, New Jersey. All subsequent editions have been played in Memphis, Tennessee.
Rankings are based on the AP Poll prior to the game being played.
Source:

MVPs

The bowl has named a single MVP for each game, since inception. In nine instances, the MVP has played on the losing team, including four instances in a seven-game span during 1977–1983. The most recent MVP to play on the losing team was Kwame Ellis of Stanford in 1995. Quarterback Rob Perez of Air Force was named MVP twice, in 1990 and 1991.
GameMVPTeamPosition
1959Jay HuffmanPenn StateC
1960Dick HoakPenn StateRB
1961Dick EasterlySyracuseRB
1962Terry BakerOregon StateQB
1963Ode BurrellMississippi StateHB
1964Ernest AllenUtahQB
1965Tom BryanAuburnFB
1966Jimmy CoxMiami SE
1967Jim DonnanNC StateQB
1968Steve HindmanOle MissTB
1969Bobby AndersonColoradoTB
1970Dave AbercrombieTulaneTB
1971Joe FergusonArkansasQB
1972Jim StevensGeorgia TechQB
1973Stan FrittsNC StateFB
1974Randy WhiteMarylandDT
1975Ricky BellUSCRB
1976Barry KraussAlabamaLB
1977Matt KupecNorth CarolinaQB
1978James Wilder Sr.MissouriRB
1979Roch HontasTulaneQB
1980Mark HerrmannPurdueQB
1981Eddie MyersNavyTB
1982Jeremiah CastilleAlabamaDB
1983Doug FlutieBoston CollegeQB
1984Bo JacksonAuburnRB
1985Cody CarlsonBaylorQB
1986Jeff FrancisTennesseeQB
1987Greg ThomasArkansasQB
1988Dave SchnellIndianaQB
1989Randy BaldwinOle MissRB

GameMVPTeamPosition
1990Rob PerezAir ForceQB
1991Rob PerezAir ForceQB
1992Cassius WareOle MissLB
1993Jeff BrohmLouisvilleQB
1994Johnny JohnsonIllinoisQB
1995Kwame EllisStanfordCB
1996Malcolm ThomasSyracuseRB
1997Sherrod GideonSouthern Miss.WR
1998Shaun KingTulaneQB
1999Adalius ThomasSouthern Miss.DE
2000Cecil SappColorado StateRB
2001Dave RagoneLouisvilleQB
2002LaTarence DunbarTCUWR
2003Morgan ScalleyUtahDB
2004Stefan LeForsLouisvilleQB
2005Paul SmithTulsaQB
2006Blake MitchellSouth CarolinaQB
2007Derek PeguesMississippi StateFS
2009Ventrell JenkinsKentuckyDT
2010 Ryan MallettArkansasQB
2010 Latavius MurrayUCFRB
2011Isaiah PeadCincinnatiRB
2012Trey WattsTulsaRB
2013Dak PrescottMississippi StateQB
2014Kyle AllenTexas A&MQB
2016 Alex CollinsArkansasRB
2016 Trenton ThompsonGeorgiaDT
2017Allen LazardIowa StateWR
2018Taylor CorneliusOklahoma StateQB
2019Malcolm PerryNavyQB

Source:
indicates the MVP played on the losing team

Most appearances

Updated through the December 2019 edition.
;Teams with multiple appearances
;Teams with a single appearance
Won : Baylor, Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Purdue, USC
Lost : Boise State, Boston College, Fresno State, Kansas, Maryland, Memphis, Michigan State, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Pittsburgh, Rice, Stanford, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Villanova
Source:

Appearances by conference

Updated through the December 2019 edition.
Every SEC member except Florida has played in the game. All told, 44 of the 64 current Power Five conferences' members have played in the game.

Game records

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Media coverage

The earliest editions of the bowl were broadcast by NBC and ABC. Several different networks carried the 1981 through 1989 games, including USA Network, Katz Broadcasting, and Raycom. Since 1990, the game has been broadcast predominantly by ESPN, with some editions on ABC.