Birmingham Bowl Cancelled; Too Few Teams To Play

The TicketSmarter Birmingham Bowl, which was scheduled for Friday, Jan. 1 at Legion Field will be cancelled due to an insufficient amount of teams participating in bowl season. This year's game was supposed to matchup a member from the SEC and the American Athletic Conference. The cancellation puts an end to a 14-year run of bowl games in Birmingham.

“We have made the difficult decision to cancel the TicketSmarter Birmingham Bowl,” said Mark Meadows, executive director. “As the inventory of available teams lessened, our ability to stage the game was compromised. We will direct our focus to next year’s bowl, and look forward to staging the game in the 2021 season.”

The game is owned and operated by ESPN Events and was originally known as the PapaJohns.com Bowl and then the BBVA Compass Bowl until it became the TIcketsmarter Birmingham Bowl in 2019.

Whether certain cities have restrictions, travel complications or too few teams to compete at the end of the year, several bowls have had to postpone until 2021. There are now 13 bowl games that have been cancelled due to COVID-19 in one way or another.

This year was scheduled to be the final game using Legion Field as the host as contraction is underway on Protective Stadium. The $174 million stadium is expected to be completed in 2021. However "The Old Gray Lady" will still get to hold at least one more football game as the Magic City Classic is scheduled to be held on April 17.