History of the New Orleans Bowl

When Colorado State and North Texas met in the inaugural New Orleans Bowl, it culminated nearly two years of planning and preparation for the event, America's newest bowl game in 2001. Although the New Orleans Bowl was officially certified by the NCAA in April 2001, officials worked to make this game a reality since 1999.

The New Orleans Bowl was actually the brainchild of Sun Belt Conference commissioner Wright Waters. In 1999, after announcing the Sun Belt's sponsorship of football, Waters began exploring postseason options for the league's champion, a necessity for the fledgling I-A conference.

Waters visited with the Nokia Sugar Bowl staff about the possibility of a dual sponsorship in New Orleans. The BCS event declined the opportunity, but gave its blessing to allow Waters to pursue a pre-Christmas game in the Crescent City.

Waters, a member of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation's (GNOSF) executive committee, approached the group with the idea of sponsoring a new postseason football bowl game. The GNOSF immediately accepted the proposal and began work on serving as the sponsoring agency for the nation's newest bowl game. As it turned out, the placement of the game a week prior to Christmas was very attractive to the entire New Orleans community.

With the bowl structure beginning to take shape, New Orleans Bowl, Inc. turned its attention to securing television coverage of the event, looking to long-time partner, ESPN. The Sun Belt Conference was the first league to sign a long-term contract with ESPN, when the then-fledgling network started in 1979. The league's men's basketball tournament has been televised on ESPN every year since 1980.

The all-sports network entered into a three-year agreement with the New Orleans Bowl, and this year's game will be televised nationally by ESPN2 in close to 80 million homes. The New Orleans Bowl allowed ESPN to set the date for the game, and being the first game of the bowl season, it is expected that the contest will draw better than average ratings.

After putting the television in place, New Orleans Bowl, Inc. looked to solidify the administrative structure of the New Orleans Bowl and also began the procedures to make a presentation to the NCAA for its approval of the game.

First, the position of executive director needed to be filled, and the GNOSF looked no further than local sports legend Ron Maestri, the former hall of fame baseball coach and athletic director at the University of New Orleans. Maestri's was an obvious choice in New Orleans, having served in a similar capacity when the city served as host to three NCAA Men's Basketball Final Fours and a Women's Basketball Final Four. In fact, Maestri will serve as Executive Director of the New Orleans Local Organizing Committee's efforts when the 2003 NCAA Men's Final Four comes to the Superdome.

In April of 2000, the bowl applied to the NCAA for its initial certification from the national governing board for college athletics. All bowls must go through a two-part process that proves to the NCAA that the game can ensure the minimum payouts required to the participating teams, and the New Orleans Bowl proved its mettle and received initial approval from the NCAA. When the New Orleans Bowl received its final certification last spring, the NCAA implemented a three-year moratorium on additional bowl games through 2003.

The final administrative step in starting the New Orleans Bowl was the organizing an executive committee and general membership committee. In forming the New Orleans Bowl's executive committee, Dr. Myron Moorehead, a respected and renowned physician and civic leader, was chosen as chairman of the group. The bowl's general committee is comprised of nearly 150 New Orleans area business leaders, civic leaders, and political and law enforcement officials.

Enter the Mountain West Conference.

The MWC, which placed its third team in the Silicon Valley Bowl in 2000, was looking for an alternative for that selection this year. Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, the former commissioner of Sun Belt, approached Waters and Maestri about the possibility of having a closed matchup between the two leagues. It didn't take long for the principles to sign a one-year contract between the MWC and the New Orleans Bowl.

In 2002, the New Orleans Bowl found a new opponent for the Sun Belt Conference Champion. Conference USA signed a multi-year agreement with the New Orleans Bowl to send a mutually agreed upon team to its annual game. The New Orleans Bowl, to be played Dec. 17, 2002 at the Louisiana Superdome, will now match a Conference USA team against the champion of the Sun Belt Conference.

The 2001 New Orleans Bowl, which was televised by ESPN2, saw 26,718 tickets sold in its inaugural year as Colorado State defeated North Texas 45-20 last December 18. The game had a 1.37 national rating, making it the third-most watched bowl game on ESPN2 since the network began broadcasting bowl games in 1997.

Conference USA's eventual opponents in the New Orleans Bowl were excited as well. "We at the Sun Belt Conference are very excited to begin this special relationship with our friends at Conference USA," said Sun Belt Commissioner Wright Waters. "Conference USA brings many quality football programs to the New Orleans Bowl table. This will be an exciting venture as we continue to make the New Orleans Bowl a success."

Conference USA has 10 football-playing members for 2002, which include Army, Cincinnati, East Carolina, Houston, Louisville, Memphis, Southern Miss, TCU, Tulane and UAB. South Florida, a member of C-USA in all other sports, becomes a football member in 2003.

The Sun Belt Conference heads into its second season of football competition in 2002 with seven member institutions: Arkansas State University, the University of Idaho, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the University of Louisiana at Monroe, Middle Tennessee State University, New Mexico State University and University of North Texas.

Disclaimer College-Bowl-Games.com is an affiliate site of Barrystickets.com,. Barrystickets.com is an independent, privately-owned company engaged in the service of finding and providing tickets for concerts, sporting events and theater nationwide.We are not affiliated with, nor are we authorized by any box office, venue or promoter. Any and all copywrites, trademarks or tradenames used on this website are for descriptive purposes only. We are not affiliated with the NCAA, or Ticketmaster,. We are not acting on the authority of or by the permission of any of the above-mentioned entities. Our prices are higher than the face value of the tickets. This amount is a service charge we add reflecting the difficulty, and cost of obtaining the tickets.

Tickets to the New Orleans Bowl Tickets are available for sale online 24 hours a day though secure servers. We carry New Orleans Bowl Tickets as well as all other College Bowl Games. You can choose New Orleans Bowl Tickets by date or opponent. We also have a map of the venue so you can see the location of your New Orleans Bowl Tickets