The 2018 Liberty 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 ...

between the #24 Missouri Tigers of 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 ...

and the unranked Oklahoma State Cowboys of the

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

. The 60th edition of the

Liberty Bowl The Liberty Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in late December or early January since 1959. For its first five years, it was played at Philadelphia Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia before being held at Atlantic City ...

took place on December 31, 2018 at 2:45 p.m. 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 2018–19 bowl games that concluded the 2018 FBS football season. Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

, hosted the game for the 54th straight year. The game was sponsored by automobile parts and accessories store AutoZone and was officially known as the AutoZone Liberty Bowl. The Cowboys beat the Tigers by a score of 38–33 to claim the school's first Liberty Bowl championship and their 19th bowl game overall.

Teams

The game was played between

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

from the

(SEC) and

Oklahoma State Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New M ...

from the

. The two programs had previously met 52 times, with Missouri holding a 29–23 series lead. Both programs were members of the

Big Eight Conference The Big Eight Conference was a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football. It was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Associatio ...

for many years, and met annually from 1960 through 1997; their most recent prior meeting had been the

2014 Cotton Bowl Classic The 2014 Cotton Bowl Classic was a college football bowl game between the #9 Missouri Tigers of the Southeastern Conference and the #13 Oklahoma State Cowboys of the Big 12 Conference. The 78th edition of the Cotton Bowl Classic took place on Janu ...

, won by Missouri.

Missouri Tigers

Missouri received and accepted a bid to the Liberty Bowl on December 2. The Tigers entered their third Liberty Bowl with an 8–4 record (4–4 in conference).

Oklahoma State Cowboys

Oklahoma State received and accepted a bid to the Liberty Bowl on December 2. The Cowboys entered the bowl with a 6–6 record (3–6 in conference).

Game summary

Scoring summary

Statistics

References

External links

*
Box score
at

{{Oklahoma State Cowboys bowl game navbox

Liberty Bowl

Missouri Tigers football bowl games Oklahoma State Cowboys football bowl games