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Along the Gulf of Mexico is the lovely city of Mobile home of the "GoDaddy.com" Bowl.
Despite the odd sounding name this Bowl is a well established game with historical tie ins with many conferences. Currently the bowl pits the Mid American Conference against the Sun Belt conference but since it's founding in 1999 it has had tie ins with The ACC, Conference USA (before they became conference FCS), and the Western Athletic Conference before the Mountain West blew them up.
But since 2010 it's been a game between the MAC and Belt, and in that time the Mid American Conference is 3-1. Overall since 1999 the MAC has eight wins against just three losses. With the MAC holding six bowl eligible teams and the Sun Belt at six or seven it's going to once again be a MAC school versus someone from the Sun Belt.
This year, for the third straight time, the Belt will be sending Arkansas State.
Red Wolves Accept Invitation to 2014 GoDaddy.com Bowl - ArkansasMatters.com
The Arkansas State Athletics Department announced Monday that the Red Wolves’ football team has accepted an official invitation to play in the 2014 GoDaddy Bowl at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Ala., on Jan. 5 at 8 p.m., when it will face a Mid-American Conference opponent to be announced at a later date.
The 7-5 RedWolves are the second ranked team in the Sun Belt and their marquee win was probable their Thursday night September contest against Troy State.
They are 1-1 in their previous two GoDaddy bowls. They lost to NIU in 2012 and then last January the knocked off Kent State.
Founded as the Mobile Alabama Bowl sponsorship was picked up by GMAC until the economic turmoil of 2008 and 2009 pushed them out of the bowl sponsorship game. GoDaddy picked up the sponsorship after that. It was the GoDaddy.com bowl until this past season when the dot-com was dropped. The use of generic top-level domain extensions by GoDaddy motivated the move.
I'm not overly fond of names like "GoDaddy Bowl". If I had my Druthgers it would be the Yellowhammer Bowl (State Bird) by Godaddy or the Long Leaf Bowl (State Tree) by GoDaddy.
Since the game was picked up by GoDaddy the attendance has been running at about 37 thousand fans per game.
Arkansas State GoDaddy Bowls
2012
2013