Sunday, October 25, 2009

St. Petersburg Bowl Tickets Now On Sale

By David Griffith

The St. Petersburg Bowl will play it's second annual college football game on December 19, 2009 in St. Petersburg, Florida. After debuting in 2008 as a new NCAA sanctioned FBS bowl, the game is played at Tropicana Field, known as the home of Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays. The most likely teams to play in the St. Petersburg Bowl are from the Big East and Conference USA conferences, although there are contingencies for the Sun Belt conference as well. The bowl was approved in the same year as the EagleBank Bowl.

ESPN televises the St. Petersburg bowl and will show the game after the New Mexico Bowl. Although the bowl game is still in it's first few years of existence, it is a hit with fans in the Tampa and St. Pete areas as well as college football fans. What could be better than a college football game on the Gulf Coast in December?

The St. Petersburg Bowl is played at Tropicana Field, which is primarily a baseball park, which means that seating can be awkward. This is often the case with multiple-use stadiums, but a new Rays ballpark may be in the works, and if so, the game will likely be moved. However, it is not uncommon for football games to share time with baseball, and cities must strongly consider multi-use stadiums in order to fully leverage the tax dollars spent on sports stadiums.

ESPN manages and owns the St. Petersburg Bowl, which is not unusual, as the network owns several bowl games. These include not only the New Mexico Bowl, but also the Armed Forces Bowl, the Maaco Las Vegas Bowl, the Hawaii Bowl and the PapaJohns.com Bowl. With ESPN getting more experience running bowl games, it's possible there may be more bowls they take on in the coming seasons.

Last year's inaugural St. Petersburg Bowl featured local South Florida against C-USA's Memphis Tigers in a rout, where USF quarterback Matt Grothe torched the Tigers for 236 yards and three touchdowns. Grothe walked away with a win and the Most Outstanding Player award as his Bull won 41-14.

If you are excited about attending the St. Petersburg Bowl and are looking for tickets, be sure to scope out all of the best prices at one time using an online tool like TicketZinger.com, and also check out online selling sites like eBay. You can sometimes find good deals on places such as Craigslist, but be very careful. If a deals sounds too good to be true, or has a 'story' that sounds too good, it probably is.

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