Birmingham Bowl: Story, Cast and Series Facts

Story and premise

The Birmingham Bowl (formerly known as the PapaJohns.com Bowl and the BBVA Compass Bowl) is a post-season NCAA-sanctioned Division I-A college football bowl game approved in April 2006 and played annually at the 71,594-seat Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. ESPN Regional Television (doing business as ESPN Plus, a subsidiary of ESPN) owns and manages the bowl's operations, sponsorships and marketing, including broadcast of the game on ESPN. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) also provides marketing, management and game-day operations support. The game was sponsored by BBVA Compass, a subsidiary of Bilbao, Spain-based Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria which is based in Birmingham. Compass and bowl officials announced the new sponsorship on November 4, 2010. The game formerly promoted the website of Papa John's Pizza, who became the title sponsor signing a multi-year agreement on November 16, 2006. The company declined to renew its sponsorship in 2010, so the bowl name reverted to its working title before the announcement of the Compass deal. On April 3, 2013, BBVA Compass decided not to renew its sponsorship of the BBVA Compass Bowl following the January 2014 game.

The bowl originally had a four-year agreement with Conference USA to match a representative of that conference against an opponent from the Big East Conference, but the bowl's officials later appealed to the NCAA for a recertification which was granted in late April 2008. In 2008 and 2009, the bowl featured the Southeastern Conference's ninth bowl-eligible team and a team from the Big East Conference. The game currently features teams from the SEC and the American Athletic Conference. Should either of these conferences not fulfill their bowl commitments, a team from C-USA or the Mid-American Conference will take their place, provided it is bowl eligible. Otherwise, the game will choose an at-large team (as in 2008, when the SEC was unable to send a team; the bowl selected ACC team North Carolina State to face Rutgers from the Big East despite the fact that the bowl had an arrangement with the Sun Belt Conference at the time and it had at least one bowl-eligible team it could send).

Series details

• Title: Birmingham Bowl
• Format: Sports
• Language: English
• Premiere date: 2006-12-23
• Status in TVmaze: Running
• Network listed by TVmaze: ESPN
• Network country: United States
• Typical episode runtime: 203 minutes
• TVMaze ID: 10833

Cast and credited roles

• Taylor Zarzour — Play-by-Play Commentator
• Matt Stinchcomb — Analyst
• Alyssa Lang — Sideline Reporter
• Tom Hart — Play-by-Play Commentator
• Dave Neal — Play-by-Play Commentator
• Cole Cubelic — Analyst
• Aaron Murray — Analyst
• Taylor Davis — Sideline Reporter
• Ashley ShahAhmadi — Sideline Reporter

Seasons in the TVmaze catalogue

• Season 2006: premiered 2006-12-23; final listed air date 2006-12-23.
• Season 2015: premiered 2015-12-30; final listed air date 2015-12-30.
• Season 2016: premiered 2016-12-29; final listed air date 2016-12-29.
• Season 2021: premiered 2021-12-28; final listed air date 2021-12-28; episode order: 1.
• Season 2022: premiered 2022-12-27; final listed air date 2022-12-27; episode order: 1.
• Season 2023: premiered 2023-12-23; final listed air date 2023-12-23; episode order: 1.
• Season 2024: premiered 2024-12-27; final listed air date 2024-12-27; episode order: 1.
• Season 2025: premiered 2025-12-29; final listed air date 2025-12-29; episode order: 1.
• Season 2026: premiered 2026-12-29; final listed air date 2026-12-29; episode order: 1.

Source and licence

Adapted from Birmingham Bowl on TVmaze. The synopsis is reproduced as plain text; catalogue facts, cast and season records are selected and reformatted. This adapted text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, following the TVmaze API licence. Network and web-channel credits identify the service listed in this source; they do not establish current streaming availability.