The 2017 Independence Bowl was a college football

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 Subdivi ...

played on December 27, 2017, at Independence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana. The 42nd annual

Independence Bowl The Independence Bowl is a post-season National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)-sanctioned Division I college football bowl game that is played annually each December at Independence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana. The Independence Bowl ...

featured the

Southern Miss Golden Eagles The Southern Miss Golden Eagles and Lady Eagles (also known as Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles and Lady Eagles) are the intercollegiate athletics teams that represent the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), located in Hattiesburg, Miss ...

of Conference USA against the Florida State Seminoles of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Sponsored by Walk-On's Bistreaux & Bar, the game was officially known as the Walk-On's Independence Bowl. The contest was televised 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%). Th ...

, with kickoff at 1:30 PM ( EST). It was one of the 2017–18 bowl games concluding the 2017 FBS football season. Florida State defeated Southern Miss, .

Team selection

The game featured the

against the Florida State Seminoles. This was the twenty-third meeting between the schools, with Florida State holding a 13–8–1 advantage. They had most recently played in 1996, when the

Seminoles The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and ...

defeated the

Golden Eagles The golden eagle (''Aquila chrysaetos'') is a bird of prey living in the Northern Hemisphere. It is the most widely distributed species of eagle. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae. They are one of the best-known birds ...

by a score of 54–14.

Southern Miss

Florida State

On December 21, 2017, an unofficial report was published on

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...

claiming that the Seminoles were not bowl eligible due to an NCAA rule stating that for an FCS opponent to be countable towards bowl eligibility, the FCS program must have awarded 90% of the FCS scholarship limit.

Delaware State Delaware State University (DSU or Del State) is a public historically black land-grant research university in Dover, Delaware. DSU also has two satellite campuses: one in Wilmington and one in Georgetown. The university encompasses four colle ...

, an FCS team that lost to FSU earlier in the season, did not meet the 90% threshold set by the NCAA. Without this win, FSU stood at 5–6 on the season. However, on December 22, 2017, Florida State addressed the issue and stated that Delaware State verified its scholarship situation as eclipsing the 90-percent threshold. This, FSU claims, is due to an alleged established NCAA rule interpretation, allowing academic and other non-athletic scholarships to count towards the required threshold, however they did not reference the interpreted rule. The confirmation officially gave Florida State bowl eligibility, and allowed the team to play in the Independence Bowl.

Game summary

Scoring summary

Statistics

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Independence 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 s ...

2017 in sports in Louisiana December 2017 sports events in the United States