Russell Athletic Bowl

The Russell Athletic Bowl is an annual college football bowl game that is played in Orlando, Florida, at the Citrus Bowl. The bowl is operated by Florida Citrus Sports, a non-profit group which also organizes the Capital One Bowl and Florida Classic. The bowl was founded in 1990 by Raycom and was originally played at Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami where it was known as the Blockbuster Bowl, the CarQuest Bowl, and the MicronPC Bowl. The bowl was also known as the Tangerine Bowl, the original name for the Capital One Bowl, from the time it moved to Orlando until Foot Locker, the parent company of Champs Sports, purchased naming rights in 2004, naming it the Champs Sports Bowl. On June 18, 2012, naming rights were purchased by Russell Athletic for the 2012-2015 games.

What is now the Russell Athletic Bowl was sprung from a desire to hold a second bowl game in Miami as an accompaniment to the Orange Bowl, and to showcase the brand new stadium in the city that was built in 1987. Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga quickly joined forces with bowl organizers and brought in Blockbuster Video, which he owned at the time, as title sponsor. The inaugural game, played on December 28, 1990, pitted Florida State and Penn State, and two legendary coaches, Bobby Bowden versus Joe Paterno in front of over 74,000 at Joe Robbie Stadium. Subsequent games, however, never matched the success of the first, even though the bowl was eventually moved to New Year's Day in 1993. For the 1994 playing, CarQuest Auto Parts became the title sponsor after Huizenga sold Blockbuster Video to Viacom (which later acquired, and renamed itself after, the CBS TV network, which broadcast the game during its New Year's Day era; a new Viacom was spun off from CBS in 2006, though Blockbuster was itself spun off in 2004). The New Year's Day experiment was short lived as the organizers of the Orange Bowl, who had been seeking to move the game out of the aging Miami Orange Bowl for some time, received permission to move to Joe Robbie Stadium beginning in 1996. After the 2000 playing, Florida Citrus Sports took over the game and moved it to Orlando.

Since the 2006 football season, the bowl has matched teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big Ten Conference. Under the terms of a television deal signed with ESPN in 2006, the bowl will be held after Christmas Day from 2006–2009, and be shown on ESPN in prime time. The change was made to move the game from the less-desirable pre-Christmas date utilized from 2001–2004.

On August 18, 2009, the Champs Sports Bowl announced that the Big East will be one of the tie-in conferences for 4 years starting in 2010. They will also have the option of selecting Notre Dame once out of the four years (which they did in 2011). On October 7, 2009, the Champs Sports Bowl announced that they had extended their agreement with the Atlantic Coast Conference for the same term. The game will match the third pick from the ACC against the second selection from the Big East. The previous agreement matched the 4th pick from the ACC against the 4th or 5th pick from the Big Ten. The University of Notre Dame, representing the Big East (as permitted in the agreement with the conference) and Florida State University from the ACC played in the 2011 bowl.

Before gaining Blockbuster Entertainment as the corporate sponsor for the inaugural event, the game was tentatively referred to as the Sunshine Classic.