The Texas Bowl Grows Up, Bit By Bit

Well, Houstonians, our bowl game has grown up. That’s right, the Texas Bowl is going big time and this year will be joining ESPN’s Capital One Bowl Week lineup. The game will be played on New Year’s Eve this year, and kick-off will be at 2:30 pm.

Did I mention the game is on ESPN this year?

That means that most of the nation might actually be able to see the game, seeing as for the past three years the game has been shown on the NFL Network. Of course, I’m not sure what a television audience will look like at 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon, but the numbers will still be better than what the NFL Network could attract.

This is the game’s third year of existence, and all of its games have
been played at Reliant Stadium. The first game featured Rutgers versus
Kansas State, and attendance was only so-so. Game number two attracted
62,097 fans for a Texas match-up between the Cougars and TCU. And last
year’s game featured hometown favorite Rice defeating Western Michigan
before a crowd of 58,830.

Seeking to keep high attendance, the
bowl has again changed its conference affiliations. This year’s game
will feature Navy — if bowl-eligible — against the seventh-best team
from the Big 12 — once again, if there is a seventh team in the Big 12
that is bowl-eligible.

On the surface, this probably doesn’t
look like an attractive match-up, but I can see the thinking here
because about the only way the Aggies are going to make a bowl game is
as the seventh-best team in the conference — though the team’s going
to struggle to reach the six-win bowl-eligibility threshold. And if
there’s one way to guarantee a big crowd, it’s to have the Aggies
involved (I’m not much of a Texas A&M fan, but I’ll give them this:
Those fans are supportive and turn out for the games).

Along
with being the first time the Texas Bowl will be aired on ESPN, this
will be the first time that it will be played on a New Year’s Eve, and
none of the six Houston Bowl games — the bowl game that became the
Texas Bowl — were ever played on New Year’s Eve. This will be the
first New Year’s Eve bowl game played in Houston since Texas defeated
Pittsburgh 32-27 in the Bluebonnet Bowl on December 31, 1987.

The
Texas Bowl claims to have over 20,000 season ticket holders for the
game, so if you’re interested in the game, and don’t want to be worried
about alumni and students from the selected schools grabbing the seats,
you might consider buying the tickets now. And if by some type of
miracle the Aggies should actually make the game, you can probably
scalp them on StubHub for a lot of money.

And if Navy doesn’t qualify for a game, or if the Big 12 doesn’t have seven bowl-eligible teams, then Conference USA will send a team.
The Cougars probably wouldn’t be the C-USA representative, however, as
they should be competing for the C-USA title and a guaranteed bowl
spot, not a conditional bowl spot.