Sugar Bowl


The Sugar Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in New Orleans, Louisiana. It has been played annually since January 1, 1935, and celebrated its 75th anniversary on January 2, 2009. The Sugar Bowl, along with the Orange Bowl and Sun Bowl, are the second-oldest bowl games in the country, behind the Rose Bowl Game.
The Sugar Bowl was originally played at Tulane Stadium before moving to the Superdome in 1975. When the Superdome and the rest of the city suffered damage due to both the winds from and the flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Sugar Bowl was temporarily moved to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta in 2006. Since 2007, the game has been sponsored by Allstate and officially known as the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Previous sponsors include Nokia and USF&G Financial Services.
The Sugar Bowl has had a longstanding—albeit not exclusive—relationship with the Southeastern Conference . Indeed, the Sugar Bowl did not feature an SEC team only four times in its first 60 editions, and an SEC team played in the game in every year but one from 1950 to 1995. The SEC's opponent varied from year to year, but prior to the advent of the Bowl Championship Series, it was often the runner-up of the Big Eight, SWC, or a major independent.
The Sugar Bowl-SEC relationship has been altered over the past twenty years due to conference realignments and the emergence of a series of coalitions and alliances intending to produce an undisputed national champion in college football, but the ties between the Sugar Bowl and the SEC have persisted and have recently been strengthened. Since 2015, the Sugar Bowl, along with the Rose, Orange, Cotton, Peach, and Fiesta bowls, is one of the "New Year's Six" bowls in rotation for the College Football Playoff. It hosted a playoff semifinal following the 2014 and 2017 seasons, and will next host one following the 2020 season. In other years, it will feature the best available teams from SEC and the Big 12 conferences, an arrangement nearly identical with the relationship between the Rose Bowl and the champions of the Big Ten and Pac-12.
As a member of the Bowl Championship Series, the Sugar Bowl hosted the BCS National Championship Game twice 2000 and 2004, as the national championship rotated between the bowls themselves until 2006.
The payout for the 2006 game was $14–17 million per participating team. According to Sports Illustrated, the 2007 salary for Sugar Bowl CEO Paul Hoolahan was $607,500.

History

In 1890, Pasadena, California, held its first Tournament of Roses Parade to showcase the city's mild weather compared to the harsh winters in northern cities. As one of the organizers said: "In New York, people are buried in snow. Here, our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear . Let's hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise." In 1902, the annual festival was enhanced by adding a football game.

In 1926, leaders in Miami, Florida, decided to do the same with a "Fiesta of the American Tropics" that was centered around a New Year's Day football game. Although a second "Fiesta" was never held, Miami leaders later revived the idea with the "Palm Festival". The football game and associated festivities of the Palm Festival were soon named the "Orange Bowl."
In New Orleans, Louisiana, the idea of a New Year's Day football game was first presented in 1927 by Colonel James M. Thomson, publisher of the New Orleans Item, and Sports Editor Fred Digby. Every year thereafter, Digby repeated calls for action, and even came up with the name "Sugar Bowl" for his proposed football game.
By 1935, enough support had been garnered for the first Sugar Bowl. The game was played in Tulane Stadium, which had been built in 1926 on Tulane University's campus. Warren V. Miller, the first president of the New Orleans Mid-Winter Sports Association, guided the Sugar Bowl through its difficult formative years of 1934 and 1935. An unusual 2–0 score marked the 1942 Sugar Bowl, in which the sole scoring play was a safety.
Much controversy preceded the 1956 Sugar Bowl, when the Pitt Panthers, with African-American fullback Bobby Grier on the roster, met the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. There had been controversy over whether Grier should be allowed to play due to his race, and whether Georgia Tech should even play at all due to Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin's opposition to racial integration. After Griffin publicly sent a telegram to the state's Board Of Regents requesting Georgia Tech not to engage in racially integrated events, Georgia Tech's president Blake R Van Leer rejected the request and threatened to resign. The game went on as planned
In November 1967, Army's success on the field made them a strong candidate to be selected for the 1968 game. However, Pentagon officials, in the midst of the Vietnam War, refused to allow the team to play what would have been the academy's first bowl game ever—citing the "heavy demands on the players' time" as well as an emphasis on football being "not consistent with the academy's basic mission: to produce career Army officers."
Tulane Stadium hosted through December 1974, and it has since been at the Superdome. For the 1972 season, the game was moved to New Year's Eve night; which lasted for four editions, returning to New Year's Day in January 1977. The last time it was played on natural grass was in January 1971.
Compared to most bowl games, the Sugar Bowl has had steady naming rights sponsorship. Its first corporate title sponsor was USF&G Financial Services from 1987 to 1995, then Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia from 1995 to 2006. In March 2006, Allstate Insurance was announced as the new title sponsor, and has continued to sponsor the game since.
ABC Sports televised the game from 1969 through 2006. Fox Sports televised the game from 2007 to 2010 as part of its contract with the BCS. ESPN started airing the game with the 2010–11 season, after outbidding Fox for the broadcasting rights.
The 2006 game was relocated to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia, because of the extensive damage the Superdome suffered as a result of Hurricane Katrina. It returned to the refurbished Superdome in 2007.
Prior to the BCS, the game traditionally hosted the Southeastern Conference champion against a top-tier at-large opponent. This was formalized in 1975, when the SEC champion was granted an automatic bid to the Sugar Bowl starting with the end of the 1976 season. This continued throughout the time of the Bowl Coalition, a precursor to the BCS. However, the Sugar Bowl agreed to release the SEC champion if necessary to force a national championship game. Under this format, the Sugar Bowl hosted the first Bowl Coalition national championship game, when SEC champion Alabama upended Miami at the end of the 1992 season. When the Bowl Coalition became the Bowl Alliance at the start of the 1995 season, the Sugar Bowl would still release the SEC champion to go to the national championship game if they were ranked in the top two in the nation.
Under the now-defunct BCS format, the Sugar Bowl continued to host the SEC champion against a top-tier at-large opponent, unless the SEC champion went to the BCS National Championship Game. When this happened, the Sugar Bowl usually selected the highest-ranked SEC team still available in the BCS pool. The SEC champion played for the national championship in every one of the eight final editions of the BCS.
The Sugar Bowl maintains an archive of past programs, images, newsreels, and other materials. The archive, originally housed in the Superdome, survived Hurricane Katrina, but a more secure home was needed. During the summer of 2007, the Sugar Bowl donated its materials to The Historic New Orleans Collection, designating it the permanent home of its archive.
Ohio State vacated its 2011 Sugar Bowl victory over Arkansas in response to NCAA allegations over a memorabilia-for-cash scandal.
The 2012 game, pitting the Michigan Wolverines against the Virginia Tech Hokies, was the first Sugar Bowl since 2000—and only the sixth since World War II—without an SEC team. Both of the SEC's BCS participants, Alabama and LSU, played in the National Championship Game, and under BCS rules only two teams per conference were eligible for BCS bowls.
In May 2012, the Big 12 and SEC announced plans to create a new bowl game, the "Champions Bowl," that would play host to the champions of those two conferences. That November, it was officially announced that the Champions Bowl had been awarded to New Orleans under a 12-year contract beginning in 2015, and would retain the Sugar Bowl name. In addition, it was announced that the Sugar Bowl would host one of two national semi-final games every three seasons as part of the new College Football Playoff system replacing the BCS.

Game results

Rankings are based on the AP Poll prior to the game being played. Italics denote a tie game

Future games

denotes game is a College Football Playoff semifinal

Most Outstanding Players (Miller-Digby Award)

The Miller-Digby Award is presented to the Most Outstanding Player in the Sugar Bowl, as voted by sports journalists covering the game. The award was initially established in 1948 following the death of Warren V. Miller, the first president of the Bowl; it was renamed the Miller-Digby Memorial Trophy in 1959, to also honor Fred J. Digby, the first general manager and fellow founding member of the Bowl.
Terrelle Pryor was later ruled ineligible and his statistics for the 2010 season, including the 2011 Sugar Bowl, were vacated.

Most appearances

Updated through the January 2020 edition.
;Teams with multiple appearances
;Teams with a single appearance
Won : Boston College, Duke, Fordham, Kentucky, Louisville, Maryland, Navy, Utah


Lost : Air Force, Carnegie Tech, Cincinnati, Hawai'i, Illinois, Rice, Saint Mary's, Temple, Virginia, Wyoming
;Conference participation
Updated through the January 2020 edition.
RankConferenceGamesWinsLossesTiesWin pct.
1SEC7941371
2Independent2512121
3SWC13670
4Big Eight11830
5ACC10370
Big East8440
Big Ten8440
8Big 127340
9SoCon5230
10MVC3120
11WAC2020
12Mountain West1100

Source:

Broadcasting

In recent years, television broadcast rights to the Sugar Bowl have been part of the BCS contract. From 1999–2006, the game aired on ABC as part of its BCS package, where it had also been televised from 1969 through 1998. The Sugar Bowl was the only Bowl Alliance game to stick with ABC following the 1995, 1996 and 1997 seasons; the Fiesta and Orange Bowls were televised by CBS. Prior to that, NBC aired the game for several years. From 2006 to 2010, Fox broadcast the game, while ESPN picked up the Sugar Bowl after picking up the rest of the BCS beginning in the 2009–10 season. For 2013, ESPN Deportes introduced a Spanish language telecast of the game.
In November 2012, ESPN announced that it had reached a deal to maintain broadcast rights to the Sugar Bowl through 2026. ESPN pays $55 million yearly to broadcast the game beginning in the 2014–15 season under the new contract, which took effect upon the establishment of the College Football Playoff. ESPN made a similar deal to maintain broadcast rights to the Orange Bowl following the discontinuation of the BCS as well.