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 2022. It is organized by the Tampa Bay Bowl Association under Jim McVay, who has been the president and CEO since 1988. History Previous Tampa bowl game The Cigar Bowl was played at old Phillips Field near downtown Tampa from 1947 to 1954. Because the Cigar Bowl featured teams from smaller colleges, however, the 1986 Hall of Fame Bowl was the first major college bowl game to be played in the area. Hall of Fame Bowl The Hall of Fame Classic was a mid-level bowl game played at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama from 1977 to 1985. In the spring of 1986, the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame decided to discontinue their association with the bowl and realign with a new game to be played in Tampa Stadium which would inherit the Hall of Fame Bowl name. Tampa's Hall of Fame Bowl did not initially have any conference tie-ins, so organizers often sought to arrange a match-up between a team from a southern school (usually the Southeastern Conference or Atlantic Coast Conference) and one from another region of the country to maximize both game attendance and potential visitors to the area. Outback Bowl Tampa-based restaurant chain Outback Steakhouse became the game's title sponsor in April 1995, allowing the bowl to increase its payout to participants and sign agreements with the SEC and the Big Ten conferences, creating an annual cross-regional match-up that has continued ever since. In 1999, the bowl moved from Tampa Stadium to newly constructed Raymond James Stadium next door. ReliaQuest Bowl Though it had signed a six-year extension in 2019, the parent company of Outback Steakhouse decided to discontinue its association with the game in March 2022 in a cost-cutting measure, ending the longest continuous title sponsorship in college bowl history. In June 2022, Tampa-based cybersecurity company ReliaQuest was announced as the new title sponsor. The game The bowl is played on New Year's Day unless January 1 falls on a Sunday, in which case it is moved to the following Monday. It is usually the first game to start on a day which is traditionally full of