Boca Raton Bowl gets new date, earlier kickoff, TV home — ABC

During each of the past five years, the Boca Raton Bowl has been a nighttime game, played on the Tuesday before Christmas at FAU Stadium on the school’s Boca Raton campus.

Some things will be different this year, the game and ESPN announced Thursday.

While this year’s Boca Raton Bowl will still be played at FAU Stadium, it has now been shifted to Saturday, Dec. 21, with kickoff set for 3:30. ABC will carry this year’s game.

Bowl organizers said the changes were prompted in part by the fact that Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 28 this year, a later-than-usual date which will impact conference championship games across the country.

Most of those games will now take place the weekend of Dec. 6-7, pushing the start of the bowl schedule to Friday, Dec. 20. And, bowl organizers also noted, this year, the Tuesday before Christmas falls on Christmas Eve.

“This will be our first opportunity to play the Cheribundi Boca Raton Bowl under the beautiful Florida sunshine,” Doug Mosley, the game’s executive director, said in a statement announcing the changes. “While we really enjoy our traditional Tuesday evenings for the game, this year, we will move ‘Boca’s biggest annual outdoor party’ onto what it typically a perfect weather day during that time of year.”

This year’s Boca Raton Bowl will select its two participating teams from its three partner conferences: Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference and the American Athletic Conference.

Last year, AlabamaBirmingham claimed the Boca Raton Bowl championship with a 37-13 win over Northern Illinois. It marked the first bowl win in UAB history.