The 2016 Las Vegas Bowl was 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 ...

that was played on December 17, 2016, at

Sam Boyd Stadium Sam Boyd Stadium (formerly the Las Vegas Silver Bowl) is a football stadium in the western United States, located in Whitney, Nevada, an unincorporated community in the Las Vegas Valley. It honors Sam Boyd (1910–1993), a major figure in the hote ...

Whitney, Nevada Whitney (formerly East Las Vegas) is an unincorporated town and census-designated place in Clark County, Nevada, United States. The population was 38,585 at the 2010 census. Background Stowell E. Whitney, a dairy farmer from Bunkerville, Nevada ...

. The twenty-fifth annual

Las Vegas Bowl The Las Vegas Bowl is an NCAA Division I FBS annual post-season college football bowl game held in the Las Vegas area. First played in 1992, the bowl was originally held at the 40,000-seat Sam Boyd Stadium in Whitney, Nevada before moving to the ...

is one of the 2016–17 bowl games that concludes the 2016 FBS football season. The game aired on

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

. Previously sponsored by lubricant manufacturer

Royal Purple Tyrian purple ( grc, πορφύρα ''porphúra''; la, purpura), also known as Phoenician red, Phoenician purple, royal purple, imperial purple, or imperial dye, is a reddish-purple natural dye. The name Tyrian refers to Tyre, Lebanon. It is ...

, the sponsorship ended in 2015, with the name of the bowl game reverting to the official name of the Las Vegas Bowl.

Team selection

The game would have featured teams from 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 ...

and

Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...

. However, since the Pac-12 had only six bowl-eligible teams, and two of them qualified for New Years Six bowls, the sixth-place Pac-12 team was unavailable. Instead, the bowl elected to invite 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 ...

of 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) ...

. This was the first time an AAC team played in the Las Vegas Bowl. The representative from the Mountain West was

San Diego State San Diego State University (SDSU) is a public research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CSU) system ...

, which qualified for the bowl by winning the

2016 Mountain West Conference Football Championship Game The 2016 Mountain West Conference Championship Game was played on Saturday, December 3, 2016 at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie, Wyoming, and determined the 2016 football champion of the Mountain West Conference (MW). The game featured the MW West ...

. Houston played in its first-ever Las Vegas Bowl, while San Diego State appeared for a second time, the first being a 1998 loss to North Carolina. This was the third meeting between the schools, with Houston having won both previous ones. The most recent prior meeting was on October 6, 1973, when the

Cougars The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. I ...

defeated the

Aztecs The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those g ...

by a score of 14–9.Houston Cougars vs. San Diego State Aztecs football series history
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Houston

San Diego State

Game summary

On the fourth drive of the game, Houston capped a 10-play, 24-yard drive with a 31-yard field goal by Ty Cummings. After a three-and-out by San Diego State, Houston went on a 10-play, 74-yard touchdown drive. Greg Ward, Jr.'s 2-yard run put the Cougars up 10–0 to finish the 1st quarter. San Diego State responded with 34 unanswered points, leading to a 34–10 win by the Aztecs. On the first play of the Aztecs' first drive in the 4th quarter,

Donnel Pumphrey Donnel Laray Pumphrey Jr. (born December 6, 1994) is a former American football running back. He played college football at San Diego State Aztecs football, San Diego State. Pumphrey is the official all-time leader in rushing yards in NCAA Divis ...

broke the all-time FBS career record for rushing yardage.

Scoring summary

Source:

Statistics

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Las Vegas Bowl 2016–17 NCAA football bowl games

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

2016 Las Vegas Bowl 2016 Las Vegas Bowl 2016 in sports in Nevada December 2016 sports events in the United States