Miami Beach Bowl’s new owners sending it to Texas
The Miami Beach Bowl will not be returning to Marlins Park this year, of anywhere else in Florida.
The college football game staged the past three years at the baseball stadium in Little Havana has been acquired by ESPN Events from the American Athletic Conference, which founded and operated it.
ESPN reported that the game will move to Frisco, Texas, where it will be played atToyota Stadium, a 20,500-seat facility outside ofDallas that ishometoFC Dallas of Major League Soccer.
“We are proud of the postseason opportunities that we have been able to provide to student-athletes through our founding of the Miami Beach Bowl, and we appreciate the relationships that we have built with the Miami Marlins, Marlins Park and the cities of Miami and Miami Beach,” AAC commissioner Mike Aresco said in a release. “This transfer makes sense on many levels. We are excited to enhance our overall relationship with ESPN and to continue our affiliation with the bowl.”
The AAC did not confirm the new location but will continue to participate in the bowl game. An AAC team will face a Sun Belt opponent in 2017 and 2019, and one from the MidAmerican Conference in 2018, ESPN reported.
The brief run of the Miami Beach Bowl will be best remembered for the onfield brawl at the conclusion of the inaugural game, which Memphis won 55-48 over BYU in doubleovertime.
All three of the games were high-scoring affairs, but attendance was disappointing. The final game, on Dec. 19, drewonly15,262 for Tulsa’s 55-10 rout of Central Michigan. That ranked second-to-last in bowl attendance, outdrawing only the Bahamas Bowl (13,422).
The Miami Beach Bowl was one of three bowl games in South Florida, also competing with the Orange Bowl and the Boca Raton Bowl.
The high-water mark for the game at Marlins Park was in 2015 when 21,712 witnessed an entertaining 45-35 victory by Western Kentucky over South Florida. In addition to the presence of an instate team, Western Kentucky was led by quarterback Brandon Doughty, a Broward County native (NorthBrowardPrep) later drafted the Dolphins.
But considering the capacity is 34,000 in the football configuration, the crowds fell well short of success.
“You never like to lose events, but on the other side we understand the reason behind it,” said Claude Delorme, executive vice president of operations and events atMarlins Park.
The Miami Beach Bowl had a six-year contract, but the AAC and the Marlins both had the option of opting out each year, Delorme said.
“We really liked having the event,” he said. “When we built this facility we wanted to be in position to host soccer and even football. … We like to showthat the stadium can be used for a lot more than baseball.”
Marlins Park will be the site of this year’s MLB AllStar Game (July 11) and Home Run Derby (July 10). It recently drew two sellout crowds while hosting four teams in the first round of the World Baseball Classic.