Need some justification to go to the Bahamas during the winter? The Mid-American Conference has the answer.
On Monday morning, MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher announced the creation of the Bahamas Bowl, the first bowl game located outside the United States since the International Bowl, which was located in Toronto and featured MAC teams and was played from 2007 to 2010.
“It’s been another very good day for the Mid-American Conference,” Steinbrecher said. “A key component of this event is quite frankly the Bahamian government has been involved.”
The first Bahamas Bowl, which will feature opponents from the MAC and the American Athletic Conference, is scheduled for the 2014 postseason. The conference has yet to release when the game will be played or which television network will broadcast it.
A MAC team will face a Conference USA opponent in the 2015 game. The MAC will play in the game through 2019.
“Preset packages will be set up to help manage costs and make transportation easier,” Steinbrecher said. “It will truly be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The commissioner said he wants transportation, hotel and ticket packages for the Bahamas Bowl to be as economically friendly as with other bowls.
The Bahamas Bowl is the second new bowl announced by the MAC over the past four days, as the conference unveiled on Friday the Boca Raton Bowl, which will be played in Boca Raton, Fla., beginning next year.
The Boca Raton Bowl will pit a MAC team against a C-USA opponent in 2014 and an AAC team in 2015.
The event will be held before Christmas, but the actual date has yet to be determined. ESPN owns the Boca Raton Bowl and will televise the game.
MAC teams will compete in the Boca Raton Bowl from 2014 to 2019, after which a different conference will take its place for another six-year contract.
“This has all the ingredients for an excellent bowl game; a great location, wonderful facilities for student-athletes and fans and hungry teams,” Steinbrecher said in a Friday press release. “I am eagerly anticipating the inaugural game in December of 2014.”
These two games increase the official bowl count to 38 games. At the moment, a team can become bowl-eligible once it has six regular season wins.
Beginning in 2014, the MAC will have five opportunities for teams to play in bowl games, and Steinbrecher said Monday that the conference has plans to expand its bowl slate to “seven or eight” games.
Ball State and No. 23 Northern Illinois are the first MAC teams that are bowl eligible this season.
Ohio University president Roderick McDavis, who is the MAC’s representative on the NCAA Division I Board of Directors and the Bowl Championship Series Presidential Oversight Committee, is pleased with the announcement of the Bahamas Bowl.
“The Bahamas Bowl provides the Mid-American Conference with another opportunity to have one of its deserving football teams play in a bowl game as a reward for a successful season,” he said, in a statement.
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