Sun Belt, New Orleans Bowl extend agreement

Tim Buckley, Daily Advertiser, 8/20/13

The Sun Belt Conference and the New Orleans Bowl, which UL won in both 2011 and 2012, today an announced an extension of their tie-in agreement through the 2019 college football season.

The Sun Belt also has contractual agreements with two postseason games in Alabama, the GoDaddy Bowl in Mobile and the newly created Camellia Bowl in Montgomery.

But the New Orleans Bowl, which the SBC helped create, will be granted first selection of a bowl-eligible Sun Belt team each season through 2019.

Conference USA “will continue to provide an opponent” in the New Orleans Bowl through 2019, according to a new release from the Sun Belt.

“While the Sun Belt has grown tremendously and has improved each year since the first New Orleans Bowl,” SBC commissioner Karl Benson said in a statement, “our relationship with this game is as valuable as ever.”

A Sun Belt team has appeared in the New Orleans Bowl every year since its inception in 2001, and the conference owns a 7-5 record with four straights win in the postseason game.

UL’s most-recent New Orleans Bowl appearance, last December’s win over East Carolina of C-USA, drew a crowd of 48,828 to the Superdome.

The Ragin’ Cajuns beat San Diego State in the 2011 New Orleans Bowl, which to that point was their first postseason appearance since a loss to Tennessee State in the 1970 Grantland Rice Bowl at Baton Rouge.

“We are thrilled to have the Sun Belt Conference and Conference USA extend their contracts with our game,” New Orleans Bowl executive director Billy Ferrante said in a statement.

“We look forward to … working with these two conferences,” Ferrante added, “to create a one of a kind experience for the student-athletes, coaches and university administrations.”

Announcement of the contract extension between the Sun Belt and the New Orleans Bowl comes one day after announcement of creation of the ESPN-owned Camellia Bowl, which will be played in Montgomery’s 25,000-seat Cramton Stadium.