The 2021 Boca Raton 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 18, 2021, with kickoff at 11:00 a.m. EST 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 the 8th edition of the

Boca Raton Bowl The Boca Raton Bowl is an annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sanctioned post-season Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football bowl game played in Boca Raton, Florida, since December 2014 on the campus of Fl ...

, and was one of the 2021–22 bowl games concluding the 2021 FBS football season. Sponsored by roofing repair company RoofClaim.com, the game was officially known as the RoofClaim.com Boca Raton Bowl.

Teams

Consistent with conference tie-ins, the game was played between teams from the

Sun Belt Conference The Sun Belt Conference (SBC) is a collegiate athletic conference that has been affiliated with the NCAA's Division I since 1976. Originally a non-football conference, the Sun Belt began sponsoring football in 2001. Its football teams participa ...

and

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 ...

(C-USA). The bowl also has tie-ins with the American Athletic Conference (AAC),

Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I collegiate athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region that stretches from Western New York to Illinois. Nine of the twel ...

(MAC), and Mountain West Conference (MWC). This was the sixth meeting between Western Kentucky and Appalachian State; the Mountaineers entered leading the all-time series, 4–1. It was also the first time the Mountaineers and Hilltoppers played each other as FBS teams. Western Kentucky quarterback

Bailey Zappe Bailey Michael Zappe (, ) (born April 26, 1999) is an American football quarterback for the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). He played his first three seasons of college football at Houston Baptist and used his last y ...

entered the game on the verge of FBS records for single-season passing yardage and touchdowns, respectively set by

B. J. Symons Brian Jeffrey Symons (born November 19, 1980) is a former American football quarterback. Symons played professionally for the Houston Texans and the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL), the Frankfurt Galaxy and Berlin Thunder in ...

of Texas Tech in 2003 and Joe Burrow of LSU in 2019.

Western Kentucky Hilltoppers

Appalachian State Mountaineers

Game summary

During the game, Zappe threw for 6 touchdowns and 422 yards, giving him possession of both aforementioned single-season FBS passing records. He finished the season with 62 touchdowns and 5,977 yards. Zappe also tied Burrow's single-season FBS record of 65 touchdowns responsible for (combined passing and rushing) from 2019.

Statistics

References

External links

Game statistics
at statbroadcast.com {{Western Kentucky Hilltoppers bowl game navbox

Boca Raton Bowl

Appalachian State Mountaineers football bowl games Western Kentucky Hilltoppers football bowl games