International Bowl - History

History

In 2004, a partnership led by the city of Toronto bid to host a bowl game in Toronto, to help the city recover from its loss of tourism dollars due to the 2003 SARS outbreak. The NCAA sanctioned the new Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego, California, instead; Toronto re-launched its bid in 2005 and was successful, playing its first game at the end of the 2006 season.

The bowl signed agreements with two Division I conferences to provide teams: The Big East Conference, a BCS conference, and the Mid-American Conference. Both conferences are composed of schools in the American Midwest and Northeast, with the exception of Big East school South Florida. One Big East member, Cincinnati, is a former member of the MAC (conversely, the MAC had one former Big East member during the game's tenure - Temple). Temple rejoined the Big East in 2012.

The 2009 International Bowl was notable in that the Buffalo Bulls (champions of the Mid-American Conference) appeared in the first bowl game in the history of the school. The Bulls turned down their only other bowl invitation, the 1958 Tangerine Bowl, as the black players on the team were not going to be permitted to play.

After the bowl could not renew its contract with the BCS member Big East Conference, officials decided to cease the contest. It was hoped that the bowl could be revived later on, but the Big East's contract with the new Pinstripe Bowl complicated matters.

In all four editions of the International Bowl, the Big East representative defeated the MAC representative, with only the first game decided by fewer than 18 points. Campbell Blake was the International Bowl's Director of Communications and Media Relations during the last two years of the game.

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