The 2017 Gasparilla 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 ...

played on December 21, 2017, at

Tropicana Field Tropicana Field (commonly known as the Trop) is a Multi-purpose stadium, multi-purpose domed stadium located in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The stadium has been the home of the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball (MLB) since the ...

St. Petersburg, Florida St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258,308, making it the fifth-most populous city in Florida and the second-largest city in the Tampa Bay Area, after Tampa. It is the ...

. The tenth edition of the game previously known as the

St. Petersburg Bowl The Gasparilla Bowl is an annual NCAA-sanctioned post-season college football bowl game played in the Tampa Bay area. It was first played in 2008 as the St. Petersburg Bowl at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The game was renamed the G ...

, it featured the

Temple Owls The Temple Owls are the athletic teams that represent Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The current athletic director is Arthur Johnson. The owl has been the symbol and mascot for Temple University since its founding in the 18 ...

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) ...

against the

FIU Panthers The FIU Panthers (also known as Florida INT Panthers) are the athletic teams representing Florida International University, an American public university located in Westchester, Florida. The Panthers currently compete in National Collegiate Athl ...

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 ...

. It began at 8:00 PM EST and aired 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 ...

. It was one of the 2017–18 bowl games that concluded the 2017 FBS football season. The Owls defeated the Panthers by a score of 28–3. This was the first edition of the bowl to use the Gasparilla naming, a nod to the legend of

José Gaspar José Gaspar, also known by his nickname Gasparilla (supposedly lived c. 1756 – 1821), is an apocryphal Spanish pirate, the "Last of the Buccaneers " who legend says terrorized the Gulf of Mexico for many years from his base in southwest Florid ...

, a mythical pirate who is the inspiration for Tampa's

Gasparilla Pirate Festival The Gasparilla Pirate Festival is a large parade and a host of related community events held in Tampa, Florida almost every year since 1904. The theme of the festivities is a friendly invasion by the mythical pirate José Gaspar (also known as Gasp ...

. Sponsored by lawnmower manufacturing company Bad Boy Mowers, the game was officially known as the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl. This was the last edition of the bowl played at Tropicana Field.

Teams

The game featured the

against the

and was the first-ever meeting between the two schools.

Temple Owls

This was Temple's first Gasparilla Bowl and the third consecutive (and seventh overall) bowl game for the Owls, extending the longest bowl streak in school history.

FIU Panthers

This was FIU's third bowl game in school history and second Gasparilla Bowl; the Panthers had previously played in the 2011 game (when it was known as the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl), losing to

Marshall Marshall may refer to: Places Australia * Marshall, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria Canada * Marshall, Saskatchewan * The Marshall, a mountain in British Columbia Liberia * Marshall, Liberia Marshall Islands * Marshall Islands, an i ...

by a score of 20–10. That game was the most recent bowl that the Panthers had appeared in prior to this Gasparilla Bowl, which snapped their five-year streak of not appearing in a bowl.

Game summary

Scoring summary

Statistics

Source:https://www.gasparillabowl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2017BBMGB-Final-Stats.pdf

References

External links

Box score
at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gasparilla Bowl 2017–18 NCAA football bowl games

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...

21st century in St. Petersburg, Florida 2017 in sports in Florida December 2017 sports events in the United States