The 2009 Humanitarian Bowl was the thirteenth edition of the

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

Bronco Stadium Albertsons Stadium is an outdoor athletic stadium in the western United States, located on the campus of Boise State University in Boise, Idaho. It is the home field of the Boise State Broncos of the Mountain West Conference. Known as Bronco Sta ...

Boise Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown area's ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...

, on the campus of

Boise State University Boise State University (BSU) is a public research university in Boise, Idaho. Founded in 1932 by the Episcopal Church, it became an independent junior college in 1934 and has been awarding baccalaureate and master's degrees It became a publ ...

. The game started at 2:30 pm

MST The Master of Studies or Master in Studies (M.St. or MSt; ) is a postgraduate degree at the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of St Andrews, the Australian National University, University of Dublin and the University of Ne ...

on Wednesday, December 30,

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 ...

, and was telecasted 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 ...

defeated

Bowling Green A bowling green is a finely laid, close-mown and rolled stretch of turf for playing the game of bowls. Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding of Thrupp, near Stroud, UK, invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep on ...

43–42. As of this game, the

Humanitarian Bowl The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, previously the Humanitarian Bowl (1997–2003, 2007–2010) and the MPC Computers Bowl (2004–2006), is an NCAA-sanctioned post-season college football bowl game that has been played annually since 1997 at Albertson ...

was the longest continuously running cold weather bowl. The 2009 game was Idaho's first bowl game in more than a decade, when they defeated

Southern Mississippi The University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss or USM) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to a ...

in the

1998 Humanitarian Bowl The 1998 Humanitarian Bowl was the second edition of the bowl game, held on December 30 at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. Played on the blue turf, it featured the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles and the Idaho Vandals, the champions of the Big ...

. Bowling Green, in its debut at the Humanitarian Bowl, filled a spot usually reserved for 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 ...

; however, the MWC champion TCU was selected to play in the

Fiesta Bowl The Fiesta Bowl is an American college football bowl game played annually in the Phoenix metropolitan area. From its beginning in 1971 until 2006, the game was hosted at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Since 2007, the game has been playe ...

and the conference did not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill out its usual bowl commitments. Bowling Green played in the

GMAC Bowl The LendingTree Bowl is a postseason NCAA-sanctioned Division I FBS college football bowl game that has been played annually in Mobile, Alabama since 1999. In 2021, the game was moved from Ladd-Peebles Stadium to Hancock Whitney Stadium, on the c ...

the previous season, where it lost 63–7 to

Tulsa Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the U.S. state, state of Oklahoma and List of United States cities by population, 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. ...

. The game also marked the first time the two schools had met in competition. Both teams entered the game with 7-5 records in the regular season: Idaho began the

season at 6–1, but lost four of its last five. Meanwhile, Bowling Green was 1–4 early in the season, but won six of its last seven games.

Game summary

Idaho wore their home black jerseys with gold pants. Bowling Green wore their away white jerseys with white pants. A bowl game that promised much offense certainly delivered, with just one turnover and a blocked field goal, both in Idaho's favor. The teams traded touchdowns all day and Idaho won its first bowl game in 11 years in one of the most exciting bowl games of the season. Tied in the final minute and with 3rd down and 11 at their own 49, the Falcons took a 42-35 lead with 32 seconds left on a 51-yard pass from Tyler Sheehan to Freddie Barnes, who easily slipped behind the Idaho secondary for his 17th catch of the game and number 155 in his record-setting season. After the ensuing kickoff, the Vandals had 24 seconds to work with and completed an incredible 46-yard pass for a first down at the BGSU 16-yard line. After an

incomplete pass An incomplete pass is a term in gridiron football which means that a legal forward pass is not successfully caught by an eligible offensive player within the field of play. An incomplete pass can occur if (1) the ball hits the ground in the field ...

stopped the clock with 8 seconds remaining, wide receiver Max Komar cradled a sliding 16-yard

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 ...

catch with 4 seconds left to put the Vandals within a point. Head coach Robb Akey decided to go for the win and forego overtime; QB Nathan Enderle found Preston Davis alone in the back of the

end zone The end zone is the scoring area on the field, according to gridiron-based codes of football. It is the area between the end line and goal line bounded by the sidelines. There are two end zones, each being on an opposite side of the field. ...

for the

two-point conversion In gridiron football, a two-point conversion or two-point convert is a play a team attempts instead of kicking a one-point conversion immediately after it scores a touchdown. In a two-point conversion attempt, the team that just scored must run ...

to seal the comeback victory. De'Maundray Woolridge carried Idaho with 126 yards on 22 rushes and two third-quarter touchdowns. Enderle finished the game completing 15 of his 28 passes for 240 yards and four touchdowns, after starting the game 1 of 6. Sheehan was 33 of 47 for 387 yards and four touchdowns for Bowling Green, but it was the 14th consecutive bowl loss for the Mid-American Conference. For their efforts on offense, Woolridge and Barnes were named MVP's for the game.

Scoring summary

References

{{Idaho Vandals bowl game navbox

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl Bowling Green Falcons football bowl games Idaho Vandals football bowl games December 2009 sports events in the United States 2009 in sports in Idaho