The All-American Bowl was an annual postseason

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 in the United States, American football rules first gained populari ...

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 at

Legion Field Legion Field is an outdoor stadium in the southeastern United States in Birmingham, Alabama, primarily designed to be used as a venue for American football, but occasionally used for other large outdoor events. Opened in 1927, it is named in ho ...

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% f ...

from 1977 to 1990. The game was known as the Hall of Fame Classic from 1977 to 1985. In 1986, the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame decided to relocate the Hall of Fame bowl game to

Tampa, Florida Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough ...

, where it eventually became known as the Outback Bowl (now the

ReliaQuest Bowl The ReliaQuest Bowl is an annual college football bowl game played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, usually on New Year's Day. The event has been formerly called the Hall of Fame Bowl from 1986 to 1995 and the Outback Bowl from 1996 to ...

). The game in Birmingham continued as the All-American Bowl, which was played for five years under a different organizing body. When 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 o ...

expanded to twelve schools and began contesting a

SEC Championship Game The SEC Championship Game is an annual American football game that has determined the Southeastern Conference's season champion since 1992. The championship game pits the SEC East Division regular season champion against the West Division regul ...

in 1992, Birmingham officials chose to host the conference title game and abandon the All-American Bowl. The SEC championship was moved to Atlanta's

Georgia Dome The Georgia Dome was a domed stadium in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta between downtown to the east and Vine City to the west, it was owned and operated by the State of Georgia as part of the Georgia World Congress Center ...

two years later, leaving Legion Field without any Division I-A postseason college football until 2006, when

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and the city agreed to establish a new post-season game, the

Birmingham Bowl The Birmingham Bowl is a post-season NCAA-sanctioned Division I FBS college football bowl game played annually in Birmingham, Alabama. First held in 2006, the game is owned and operated by ESPN Events. The University of Alabama at Birmingham ( ...

The game

The All-American Bowl played host to a number of successful teams from the premier college football conferences of the time (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 Assoc ...

, Big Eight (now

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 ...

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

and

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 ...

). All of them placed teams in the All-American Bowl in various years. At least one of the power conferences fielded teams in the All-American Bowl in every year of its existence; often, two of those premier conferences met in the game. The

and

each placed five teams into the All-American Bowl. The

proved to be the least successful conference, having never won a game despite placing teams in four different years.

Game results

Hall of Fame Classic

All-American Bowl

Most Valuable Players

Conference records

3–0 (1.000) *

4–1 (.800) *

3–2 (.600) *

Western Athletic Conference The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is an NCAA Division I conference. The WAC covers a broad expanse of the western United States with member institutions located in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Texas. Due to most of t ...

1–1 (.500) *

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 Associati ...

1–2 (.333) *

0–4 (.000)

Ranked Teams

On several occasions, the All-American Bowl winners finished the season ranked in the AP Top Twenty poll: *Texas A&M finished #19 in the final 1978 AP poll after defeating #19 Iowa State. *West Virginia finished #16 in the final 1983 AP poll after defeating Kentucky. *Kentucky finished #19 in the final 1984 AP poll and the final UPI poll after defeating #20 Wisconsin. *Georgia Tech finished #19 in the final 1985 AP poll after defeating Michigan State. *Texas Tech finished #19 in the final 1989 AP poll after defeating #20 Duke.