BBVA Compass Bowl

The BBVA Compass Bowl is a college football bowl game that takes place in Birmingham, Ala., each year. The bowl, which started in 2006, has tie-ins with the Big East and Southeastern conferences. The game is owned and operated by ESPN Regional Television, and is sponsored by BBVA Compass, a Birmingham-based financial company. In the 2012 edition of the game, SMU defeated Pittsburgh, 28-6.

The bowl was built out of a desire to bring postseason football back to Birmingham. The city hosted postseason football as early as 1947, when the Dixie Bowl was played there, and had hosted a total of three bowls, as well as the SEC championship game, over the years. But it had been without a postseason football game since the SEC title game moved to Atlanta in 1994.

The game began with tie-ins with the Big East and Conference USA to provide teams for the next four years. Papajohns.com also signed a multiyear title sponsorship deal before the first edition of the game. The inaugural Papajohns.com Bowl -- played Dec. 23, 2006 -- featured South Florida against East Carolina. Interestingly, South Florida, although the Big East representative, was a former member of C-USA.

That trend continued in the bowl's second season, as the Big East's Cincinnati was a previous C-USA member. The squad took on Southern Miss. Rutgers played N.C. State the following season, with the ACC squad taking the regular bid of C-USA, which did not have enough eligible teams.

In 2010, the bowl moved from December to January. Connecticut played South Carolina in the first version of the bowl held on Jan. 2. That year also marked by far the bowl's highest attendance to date, with 45,254 attendants. Papajohns.com also decided to end its sponsorship before that bowl, having signed a new deal with the NFL, so the bowl was known by its working title, the Birmingham Bowl.

Before the 2011 edition, Spanish company Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, which has a subsidiary, Compass, based in the U.S. and in Birmingham, signed on as title sponsor. The bowl now is known as the BBVA Compass Bowl. It uses the same tagline: "Southern hospitality, serious football."

In the 2011 edition of the game, Pittsburgh defeated Kentucky, 27-10. The Panthers returned the following season, falling to SMU, 28-6.

Legion Field is a football stadium in Birmingham, Ala., that houses the UAB Blazers during the college season. It also hosts the BBVA Compass Bowl, as well as the Iron Bowl -- the annual regular-season game between Alabama and Auburn.

The stadium opened in 1926 with 21,000 seats. It was named Legion Field in honor of the American Legion. Its first football game took place Nov. 19, 1927, between Howard College and Birmingham-Southern. The bowl grew over the years, with additions of upper decks that raised capacity to 83,091, press boxes and lights. The upper deck has since been removed. The capacity now is 71,594 people. It switched its field to artificial turf in 1975, then installed natural grass in 1995 before the Olympics. It since has returned to a turf field.

The field has hosted four bowl games in its history: the Dixie Bowl (1947-48), the Hall of Fame Bowl -- now the Outback Bowl -- (1977-85), the All-American Bowl (1986-90) and currently the BBVA Compass Bowl (since 2006). It also has housed several professional football teams during short-lived campaigns. When it was fielded with natural grass in the 1990s and 2000s, it hosted several soccer matches, from the 1996 Olympics to a World Cup qualifier in 2005.