The 2009 Armed Forces Bowl was the seventh edition of the

Armed Forces Bowl The Armed Forces Bowl, formerly the Fort Worth Bowl from 2003 to 2005, is an annual postseason college football bowl game. First played in 2003, the game is normally held at the 45,000-seat Amon G. Carter Stadium on the campus of Texas Christian ...

, a

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

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 Subdivis ...

, and was played at

Amon G. Carter Stadium Amon G. Carter Stadium is an open-air football stadium on the campus of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. It is the home stadium of the TCU Horned Frogs football team. It is named after Amon G. Carter, a prominent Fort Worth busin ...

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...

. The game started at 12:00 PM US EST on Thursday, December 31,

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

. The game was telecast on

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 ...

and matched the

Houston Cougars The Houston Cougars are the athletic teams representing the University of Houston. Informally, the Houston Cougars have also been referred to as the Coogs, UH, or simply Houston. Houston's nickname was suggested by early physical education instr ...

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 l ...

and the

Air Force Falcons The Air Force Falcons are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the United States Air Force Academy, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The athletics department has 17 men's and 10 women's NCAA-sanctioned teams. The current athl ...

of the

Mountain West Conference The Mountain West Conference (MW) is one of the collegiate athletic conferences affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) (formerly I-A). The MW officially began operations o ...

. The game earned a 1.6 rating. This was the second year in a row that the two teams finished their seasons against each other in the bowl game played on the TCU campus. The Cougars, the

runner-up after losing to

East Carolina East Carolina University (ECU) is a public research university in Greenville, North Carolina. It is the fourth largest university in North Carolina. Founded on March 8, 1907, as a teacher training school, East Carolina has grown from its orig ...

in the championship game, beat Air Force 34–28 last year for their first bowl victory since 1980. Air Force played in the Armed Forces Bowl for the third straight season. The Falcons lost 42–36 to

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

in the 2007 game, which was then their first bowl appearance since 2002. Each team also made their third appearance in the bowl game. The only other meeting between the two schools was in 2008 when the Falcons defeated Houston 31–28 in a game played in front of just 2,546 people at

Gerald J. Ford Stadium Gerald J. Ford Stadium is a stadium in University Park, Texas, with a Dallas mailing address. The stadium is owned by Southern Methodist University (SMU) and used primarily for games played by the SMU Mustangs football team. About Ford Stadiu ...

on the campus of SMU in

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...

. The game was originally to be a home game for the Cougars but due to

Hurricane Ike Hurricane Ike () was a powerful tropical cyclone that swept through portions of the Greater Antilles and Northern America in September 2008, wreaking havoc on infrastructure and agriculture, particularly in Cuba and Texas. Ike took a sim ...

the game was moved. The game marked the first time that Houston had entered a bowl game with a national ranking in the Coaches' Poll since the 1979 season.

Game summary

Air Force wore blue home jerseys, and Houston wore home red jerseys with contrasting colors. This was the first bowl game in the

2009 NCAA Division I FBS football season 9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Arabic digit In the beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and ...

where teams wore contrasting color jerseys, allowed by a new rule this season.Rogers Redding, Secretary-Rules Editor, NCAA Football Rules Committee
NCAA Football 2009-10 Rules and Interpretations
THE NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION May 2009 The Falcons ground out 402 yards of rushing offense on their way to their first bowl victory since 2000. Air Force was led by tailbacks, Jared Tew who had 173 yards and two

touchdown A touchdown (abbreviated as TD) is a scoring play in gridiron football. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the opponent's end zone. In Ameri ...

s and Asher Clark who carried 17 times for 129 yards and two touchdowns. Clark was named the game's MVP. Air Force's defense was just as impressive as the top ranked pass defense in the country held 2009

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

leading passer, Case Keenum to 222 yards and only one touchdown while intercepting him six times. Keenum only had six interceptions in the first 12 games of the season. After Houston was held without a touchdown before halftime,

Tyron Carrier Tyron North Carrier (born December 19, 1987) is an American football coach who was formerly a wide receiver for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. He played college football at Houston. College career Carrier finished ...

returned the opening

kickoff Kickoff or kick-off may refer to * Kick-off (association football) * Kickoff (gridiron football) * ''Kick Off'' (series), a series of computer association football games * ''Kick Off'' (album), a 1985 album by Onyanko Club * ''Kick Off'' (magaz ...

of the second half 79 yards for his fourth TD the season. He took the ball near the left sideline, then ran to the middle of the field before shooting through a gap and running untouched to get the Cougars within 24–13. Air Force immediately responded with its first kickoff return for a touchdown since 1985. Jonathan Warzeka fielded the ball and stepped back into the end zone before running 100 yards. Five Houston players got their hands on him, but couldn't get him down. According to STATS, it was only the sixth major college game since 1996 with

kickoff return A kickoff is a method of starting a drive in gridiron football. Typically, a kickoff consists of one team – the "kicking team" – kicking the ball to the opposing team – the "receiving team". The receiving team is then entitled to ''return ...

touchdowns on consecutive plays. None of them had been in a bowl game. The loss for Houston was their ninth of its last 10 bowl games. The Falcons scored a school-record 47 points, the second-most by a service academy in a bowl game. Navy put up 51 in the 2005

Poinsettia Bowl The Poinsettia Bowl was a post-season NCAA-sanctioned Football Bowl Subdivision college football bowl game played in San Diego, California, United States from 2005 to 2016. The game was originally played from 1952 to 1955 between military service ...

Handoff to Jared Tew at 2009 Armed Forces Bowl

Cougars on offense at 2009 Armed Forces Bowl

Scoring summary

References

{{Houston Cougars bowl game navbox

Armed Forces Bowl Air Force Falcons football bowl games Houston Cougars football bowl games 2009 in sports in Texas December 2009 sports events in the United States