Valero Alamo Bowl at the Alamodome
Each winter, San Antonio, Texas, hosts two of the premier teams in the Big 12 and Pac-12 conferences in the Alamo Bowl. Since the game's inception, the Alamo Bowl has been played at the Alamodome, which opened in 1993 and has a current capacity of 64,000. Since 2010, the Alamo Bowl has pitted the second-choice Pac-12 team against the second-choice Big 12 team, leading to intriguing matchups and classic competitions.
Valero Alamo Bowl History
The first Alamo Bowl was played on December 31, 1993, when the California Golden Bears trounced the Iowa Hawkeyes, 37-3. Originally created with tie-ins to the Pac-10 conference and the Southwest Conference, a lack of eligible SWC schools in the game's inaugural season led to the entire conference's demise in 1995 and a longtime partnership with the Big Ten. The now-defunct Builders Square hardware chain was the titular sponsor of the Alamo Bowl from 1993 to 1998, with Sylvania and MasterCard also sponsoring the game before an unsponsored 2006 bowl and Valero's current sponsorship since 2007.
There have been many memorable moments in the Alamo Bowl's history. In 2005, the Michigan Wolverines almost pulled off a miracle against Nebraska, but their eight-lateral final play was stopped at the Cornhusker 16-yard line, leading to a 32-28 Nebraska victory. In 2011, Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III led Baylor to a 67-56 victory over Washington, in what remains the highest-scoring bowl game to end in regulation. The January 2016 Alamo Bowl featured a comeback for the ages when TCU overcame a 31-0 deficit at halftime to defeat Oregon in triple-overtime, 47-41. In December 2017, TCU kicked a 4th quarter field goal to squeak past Stanford, 39-37, and the 2018 contest featured No. 12 Washington State holding on against an upstart Iowa State team, beating the No. 25 Cyclones, 28-26.
