The 1983 Sun Bowl, part of the 1983 bowl game season, took place on December 24, 1983, at the

Sun Bowl Stadium The Sun Bowl is an outdoor football stadium in the southwestern United States, on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso. It is home to the UTEP Miners of Conference USA, and the late December college football bowl game, the Sun Bowl. Th ...

El Paso El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the seat of El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the s ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The competing teams were the

Alabama Crimson Tide The Alabama Crimson Tide refers to the intercollegiate athletic varsity teams that represent the University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide teams compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I as a mem ...

, representing the

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities of ...

(SEC), and the

SMU Mustangs The SMU Mustangs are the athletic teams that represent Southern Methodist University in University Park, Texas, United States. The Mustangs were founded in 1911 and joined the Southwest Conference, competing against Baylor, Rice, Texas, Texa ...

of the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma an ...

(SWC). Alabama was victorious in by a final score of 28–7. This was the 50th edition of the

Sun Bowl The Sun Bowl is a college football bowl game that has been played since 1935 in the southwestern United States at El Paso, Texas. Along with the Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl, it is the second-oldest bowl game in the country, behind the Rose Bowl. ...

(49th playing between college teams).

Teams

Alabama

The 1983 Alabama squad finished the regular season with a 7–4 record and losses against

Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

and

Auburn Auburn may refer to: Places Australia * Auburn, New South Wales * City of Auburn, the local government area *Electoral district of Auburn *Auburn, Queensland, a locality in the Western Downs Region *Auburn, South Australia *Auburn, Tasmania *Aub ...

. Following their loss against Boston College, university officials announced they accepted an invitation to play in the Sun Bowl. The appearance marked the first for Alabama in the Sun Bowl, and their 27th overall bowl game appearance.

SMU

The 1983 SMU squad finished the regular season with a record of 10–1 and as SWC runner-up with their only loss coming against

. The appearance in the Sun Bowl marked the second for SMU in the game, and their 10th overall bowl game appearance.

Game summary

Coming into the 50th annual Sun Bowl, the Mustangs were heavily favored over the Crimson Tide. At #6, SMU was the highest ranked team in Sun Bowl history. Alabama dominated play in the first half and took a 28–0 lead into halftime. The Crimson Tide scored touchdowns in the first quarter on a pair of Ricky Moore runs from one and eleven yards respectively. In the second quarter, Bama scored touchdowns on a one-yard Walter Lewis run and on a 19-yard Lewis pass to

Joey Jones Joseph Patrick Jones (born 4 March 1955) is a Welsh former international football full-back who most notably played for Liverpool, with whom he won two European Cups. Club career Wrexham Jones was born in Llandudno, and joined Wrexham in 19 ...

. In the second half, both defenses were dominant with the only points coming on a 15-yard

Lance McIlhenny Lance McIlhenny is a former American college football player who was an award-winning quarterback for Southern Methodist University. He led the SMU Mustangs to two Southwest Conference championships. Biography McIlhenny is considered to be one o ...

touchdown pass to

Marquis Pleasant Marquis Anthony Pleasant (born June 28, 1965) is a former American football wide receiver. After a college career at Southern Methodist, Pleasant played the 1987 NFL season with the Cincinnati Bengals. Pleasant scored the Mustangs only touchdo ...

in the third to bring the final score to its 28–7 margin. Entering the game, the Mustangs had only allowed four rushing touchdowns all season only to see the Tide score three on the ground in the first half and outgain the Mustangs in total offense 303 to 105 yards. For his performance, Alabama

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

Walter Lewis was named the Sun Bowl MVP.

Scoring summary

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sun Bowl, 1983 1983–84 NCAA football bowl games

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

1983 in sports in Texas December 1983 sports events in the United States