The 2018 Boca Raton Bowl was a college football

bowl game In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivi ...

played on December 18, 2018, with kickoff scheduled for 7:00 p.m. EST. It was the fifth edition of the

Boca Raton Bowl The Boca Raton Bowl is an annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sanctioned post-season Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football bowl game played in Boca Raton, Florida, since December 2014 on the campus of F ...

, and one of the 2018–19 bowl games concluding the 2018 FBS football season. Sponsored by the

Cheribundi Cheribundi is a Greenwich, Connecticut-based private manufacturer of Cheribundi brand tart cherry juice beverages. Tart cherry juice is marketed to amateur and professional athletes for its natural concentrations of Phytochemical, phyto-nutrients ...

beverage company, the game is officially known as the Cheribundi Boca Raton Bowl. The game featured the

UAB Blazers The UAB Blazers are the varsity intercollegiate athletic programs that represent the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). The school is one of the fourteen member institutions of Conference USA (C-USA) and participates in Division I of the ...

, champions of

Conference USA Conference USA (C-USA or CUSA) is an intercollegiate athletic conference whose current member institutions are located within the Southern United States. The conference participates in the NCAA's Division I in all sports. C-USA's offices are ...

, and the

Northern Illinois Huskies The Northern Illinois Huskies are the athletic teams that represent Northern Illinois University (NIU). The Huskies are a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and the Mid-American Conference (MAC). The athleti ...

, champions of the

Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I collegiate athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region that stretches from Western New York to Illinois. Nine of the twe ...

. The Boca Raton Bowl was the first of three 2018–19 bowl games featuring two conference champions, along with the

Orange Bowl The Orange Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in the Miami metropolitan area. It has been played annually since January 1, 1935, making it, along with the Sugar Bowl and the Sun Bowl, the second-oldest bowl game in ...

and Rose Bowl. In just the second season since restarting its football program, the

defeated the

, 37–13, earning UAB their first-ever bowl victory.

Teams

Based on conference tie-ins, the bowl could invite teams from the

American Athletic Conference The American Athletic Conference (The American or AAC) is an American collegiate athletic conference, featuring 11 member universities and five affiliate member universities that compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA ...

(AAC) or

(C–USA) and the

(MAC). On December 2, bowl organizers announced that the participating teams would be the UAB Blazers from C–USA and the Northern Illinois Huskies from the MAC. This was the first meeting between the two programs.

UAB Blazers

UAB won the

2018 Conference USA Football Championship Game The 2018 Conference USA Football Championship Game was played on Saturday, December 1, 2018, at Johnny "Red" Floyd Stadium in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and determined the 2018 football champion of Conference USA (CUSA). The game featured the East ...

on December 1, then accepted a bid to the Boca Raton Bowl on December 2. The Blazers entered the bowl with a 10–3 record (7–1 in conference).

Northern Illinois Huskies

Northern Illinois won the

2018 MAC Championship Game The 2018 MAC Championship Game was an NCAA Division I college football conference championship game for the Mid-American Conference (MAC), that was played on November 30, 2018. It was the 22nd Mid-American Conference Championship, and was played ...

on November 30, then accepted a bid to the Boca Raton Bowl on December 2. The Huskies entered the bowl with an 8–5 record (6–2 in conference). Northern Illinois became the first team to make a second appearance in the Boca Raton Bowl, having played in the inaugural edition of the bowl in 2014.

Game summary

Scoring summary

Statistics

References

External links

Box score
at

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

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