The 2023 Fenway 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 28, 2023, at

Fenway Park Fenway Park is a baseball stadium located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, near Kenmore Square. Since 1912, it has been the home of the Boston Red Sox, the city's American League baseball team, and since 1953, its only Major League Base ...

in Boston, Massachusetts. The

Fenway Bowl The Fenway Bowl is an NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision college football bowl game played at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. Organized by ESPN Events and Fenway Sports Management, it features teams from the American Athletic Confere ...

game featured SMU from 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) ...

(The American) and

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

from the

Atlantic Coast Conference The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the eastern United States. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Associa ...

(ACC). The game began at approximately 11:00 a.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 ...

. The Fenway Bowl was one of the 2023–24 bowl games concluding the 2023 FBS football season. The game was sponsored by cloud storage company

Wasabi Technologies Wasabi Technologies, Inc. is an American object storage service provider based in Boston, Massachusetts that sells one product, an object storage service called Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage. The company was co-founded in September 2015 by David Fri ...

and was officially known as the Wasabi Fenway Bowl.

Teams

Consistent with conference tie-ins, the game featured

from the

(ACC) and SMU from the

(The American). This was the second meeting between Boston College and SMU, their prior meeting being a 31–29 SMU victory in 1986. The Eagles and Mustangs entered the game due to become conference opponents starting with the 2024 season, as SMU committed to join the ACC.

Boston College

Boston College finished the regular season 6–6, going 3–5 in ACC conference play. This was the Eagles' first appearance in a bowl game since the

2020 Birmingham Bowl The 2020 Birmingham Bowl was a college football bowl game played on January 2, 2020, with kickoff at 3:00 p.m. EST (2:00 p.m. local CST) on ESPN. It was the 14th edition of the Birmingham Bowl, and was one of the 2019–20 bowl games ...

, which they lost.

SMU

SMU finished the regular season 11–2, going 8–0 in conference play in The American. The Mustangs defeated the then 22nd-ranked

Tulane Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into ...

, 26–14, in the AAC Championship Game, the program's first conference title since 1984 when it won a share of the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma an ...

title. The Mustangs entered the bowl 17th in the

AP poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadca ...

and 24th in the

College Football Playoff The College Football Playoff (CFP) is an annual postseason knockout invitational tournament to determine a national champion for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the highest level ...

rankings. This was the Mustangs' second-straight bowl appearance, having appeared in the 2022 New Mexico Bowl, which they lost.

Game summary

Statistics

References

External links

Game statistics
at statbroadcast.com {{SMU Mustangs bowl game navbox

Fenway Bowl

Boston College Eagles football bowl games SMU Mustangs football bowl games