University of North Carolina Athletics
Carolina To Face Baylor In Russell Athletic Bowl
December 6, 2015 | Football
CHAPEL HILL – The University of North Carolina has accepted an invitation to play in the 2015 Russell Athletic Bowl vs. Baylor on Tuesday, Dec. 29, at 5:30 p.m. The game will be played in Orlando's Citrus Bowl Stadium and will be televised nationally by ESPN.
“We're looking forward to competing in the Russell Athletic Bowl and representing the University of North Carolina and the Atlantic Coast Conference,” says head coach Larry Fedora. “This is a great opportunity for our players to continue the season and have a terrific experience in Orlando. Baylor is an outstanding program from the Big 12 that has an electrifying offense and should be a tremendous challenge for our team.”
The UNC Ticket Office and The Rams Club will take priority requests for Russell Athletic Bowl tickets through Tuesday, Dec. 8 at 5 pm. Requests will be taken online through Tuesday at 11:59 pm.
This will be Fedora's seventh bowl appearance as a head coach. The Russell Athletic Bowl is Carolina's 32nd all-time bowl game, and first in Florida since the 1998 Gator Bowl in Jacksonville.
The Tar Heels are No. 10 in the College Football Playoff and Associated Press Top 25 polls and No. 11 in the Amway Coaches poll. Carolina is 11-2 overall and won Coastal Division title. UNC is averaging more than 40 points per game and 486 yards per game.
Baylor finished the regular season 9-3 overall and 6-3 in the Big 12. This will be the first time the two schools have met on the gridiron. In 1995, North Carolina defeated Arkansas, 20-10, in the 1995 Carquest Bowl in Miami, forerunner to the current Russell Athletic Bowl. This year's Russell Athletic Bowl marks just the second matchup between teams with a combined 20 wins (2013-Louisville, Miami).
About the Russell Athletic Bowl:
Originally titled the Blockbuster Bowl, the game was born in Miami, Florida, in 1990 and thrived in its first year with a marquee matchup between Penn State and Florida State which drew more than 74,000 fans. Over the next 11 years, however, the game's attendance dwindled, and it became apparent that the game would not survive in south Florida.
Sensing a unique opportunity to bring a second bowl game to Orlando, then Florida Citrus Sports (FCSports) Executive Director Chuck Rohe and the Board of Directors initiated a process of obtaining the bowl's certification. The first game was called the Tangerine Bowl, a tribute to the name of Orlando's original bowl game (now the Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl).
With each successive year in Orlando, the bowl has continued to make strides, at one point posting eight consecutive years of attendance increases (a standing record among bowl games). That growth reached a crescendo in 2011, the last game under the Champs Sports Bowl name, when Florida State and Notre Dame played before a sold-out crowd of 68,305. Over the past five years, the bowl has averaged just shy of 55,000 fans per game.
The game's place in the postseason lineup has also improved significantly over its time in Orlando. In the new College Football Playoff era, the bowl will match the top selection from the ACC (inclusive of Notre Dame) outside of the CFP series against the second selection from the Big 12 outside of the CFP series.
In early 2012, Russell Athletic signed an agreement with Florida Citrus Sports to be the new title sponsor of the game through 2017.
