In only it’s second season, the St. Petersburg Bowl has already established itself as an exciting bowl in a great venue. This year’s bowl will take place on December 19,2009, just hours after the first bowl of the season, and will likely pit teams from Conference USA against the Big East. There are contingencies in place, however, so if for some reason one of those two conferences does not attend, a team from the sun Belt Conference will be invited. The St. Petersburg Bowl is played at Tropicana Field, which is home to the Tampa Bay Rays and Major League Baseball.
This year’s St. Petersburg Bowl will again be televised on ESPN, and is the second bowl game of the year, with the New Mexico Bowl kicking off only a few hours earlier.This bowl game is a hit with college football fans in the Tampa area, being close to home and usually featuring Big East teams. It’s great for fans to experience and FBS bowl right in their backyard.
The St. Petersburg Bowl is played at Tropicana Field, which is primarily a baseball park, which means that seating can be awkward. This is often the case with multiple-use stadiums, but a new Rays ballpark may be in the works, and if so, the game will likely be moved. However, it is not uncommon for football games to share time with baseball, and cities must strongly consider multi-use stadiums in order to fully leverage the tax dollars spent on sports stadiums.
ESPN manages and owns the St. Petersburg Bowl, which is not unusual, as the network owns several bowl games. These include not only the New Mexico Bowl, but also the Armed Forces Bowl, the Maaco Las Vegas Bowl, the Hawaii Bowl and the PapaJohns.com Bowl. With ESPN getting more experience running bowl games, it’s possible there may be more bowls they take on in the coming seasons.
The first St. Petersburg Bowl had loads of offense from the South Florida Bulls, with quarterback Matt Grothe tossing for 236 yards and three touchdown strikes. The Bulls routed the Memphis Tigers, 41-14, giving the hometown crowd something to cheer about from the relatively new South Florida team.
If you are excited about attending the St. Petersburg Bowl and are looking for tickets, be sure to scope out all of the best prices at one time using an online tool like TicketZinger.com, and also check out online selling sites like eBay. You can sometimes find good deals on places such as Craigslist, but be very careful. If a deals sounds too good to be true, or has a ’story’ that sounds too good, it probably is.
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