Discover Orange Bowl

The Orange Bowl is a college football bowl game played annually at Sun Life Stadium in Miami. Part of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the Orange Bowl pits the Atlantic Coast Conference champion (unless it is playing in the national championship game) against a BCS at-large team. First played Jan. 1, 1935, the Orange Bowl is tied with two other annual games as the second-oldest bowl games in the country (behind the Rose Bowl). Known as the FedEx Orange Bowl from 1989 to 2009, the game will now be officially called the Discover Orange Bowl after Discover Financial agreed in August 2010 to become the main corporate sponsor for four years.

The 2012 Orange Bowl was won by West Virginia, which set a bowl record by scoring 70 points in a 70-33 win over Clemson.

In an attempt to begin an event similar to the Rose Bowl, the city of Miami organized the Palm Festival in the early 1930s, with the University of Miami hosting opponents on the football field on the New Year's holidays in 1933 and 1934. With the success of the game, organizers decided to rename it the Orange Bowl and seek to attract some of the best college football teams throughout the nation. The first Orange Bowl game was played at Miami Field on Jan. 1, 1935, and Bucknell -- invited to play as champion of the smaller Eastern colleges -- defeated the University of Miami 26-0.

CBS Radio began to broadcast the game the following year, which saw Catholic University hold off a late rally to beat the University of Mississippi 20-19. The 1937 game also featured a one-point final margin, as a late touchdown gave Duquesne a 13-12 victory over Mississippi State.

A new Orange Bowl Stadium had been built in time for the 1938 game, which was the lowest-scoring edition in its history as Auburn topped Michigan State 6-0. A year later, the Orange Bowl hosted the best bowl matchup of the season, featuring two undefeated teams. The University of Oklahoma agreed to accept the Orange Bowl offer instead of opting for the Rose, Cotton or Sugar bowls, but the Sooners were shut out by the University of Tennessee 17-0.

Georgia Tech appeared in three Orange Bowl games during the 1940s, defeating Missouri in 1940 and holding off Kansas in 1948. Underdog Santa Clara kicked off the next decade with an upset of Kentucky in the 1950 Orange Bowl. Three years later, the game was broadcast to a national television audience for the first time as Alabama romped over Syracuse 61-6 in 1953.

The following year marked the first of five straight Orange Bowl matchups between Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) teams and Big Seven member schools, when Oklahoma shut out top-ranked Maryland 7-0. The two schools met in a rematch two years later, with Oklahoma winning a 30th consecutive game to finish the season atop the rankings.

President John F. Kennedy was in Miami to attend the 1963 Orange Bowl -- along with 73,000 other fans -- when Alabama defeated Oklahoma 17-0. The 1965 contest was the first time the Orange Bowl game was played at night and Texas upset top-ranked Alabama despite a heroic effort from Crimson Tide quarterback Joe Namath.

By the 1970s, the Big Eight conference champion usually received a berth in the Orange Bowl, and Nebraska and Oklahoma dominated for the following two decades in appearances in the annual bowl game in Miami. The Cornhuskers celebrated the New Year's holiday in 1971 and 1972 with Orange Bowl victories as well as national championship titles. League rival Oklahoma capped its 1975 season with a national championship by winning the 1976 Orange Bowl, two years before falling to Arkansas in search of another top ranking.

In 1979, the two Big Eight giants traveled to Miami for a first-ever matchup of the league's schools in a bowl game. After finishing tied for the conference title with Nebraska after the regular season, Oklahoma avenged a November defeat to the Cornhuskers by winning 31-24 in the Orange Bowl.

Either Oklahoma or Nebraska was featured in every game during the 1980s, but two other schools claimed their first national championships titles with Orange Bowl victories over that period. ACC champion Clemson finished atop the national rankings in 1982 after a win over Nebraska. And the 1984 Orange Bowl was one of college football's greatest bowl games, as Miami defeated Nebraska 31-30 after the Cornhuskers missed a two-point conversion in the final minute.

Notre Dame and Colorado met in consecutive Orange Bowl games at the start of the 1990s, with the Buffaloes avenging defeat to the Irish a year earlier with a 10-9 victory on Jan. 1, 1991, to win the school's first national championship. The decade featured four other Orange Bowl contests that decided which school ended the season atop the national rankings.

After almost 60 years being played at the Orange Bowl Stadium, the bowl game moved to a new home when Nebraska defeated Virginia Tech at Pro Player Stadium (the former Joe Robbie Stadium) on New Year's Eve in 1996. But in 1999, the older Orange Bowl stadium was needed to host the game one final time, as the NFL's Miami Dolphins were hosting a playoff game the same day.

With the creation of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system in 1998, the Orange Bowl and three other major bowls became part of college football's new postseason setup to determine a national champion. While the game was no longer connected to the Big Eight Conference, the Orange Bowl would then host the champion of either the ACC or Big East Conference, unless that team was invited to the national championship game (which rotated among the four bowls).

The Orange Bowl served as the national championship game in 2001, when top-ranked Oklahoma gained the title by virtue of a 13-2 win over Florida State. The game also hosted the title contest in 2005, as the University of Southern California dominated Oklahoma 55-19.

Since the 2006 college football season, there has been a standalone game added as the annual national championship contest, to be hosted by the same site (and committee) as one of the major bowls. The Orange Bowl served that role in January 2009, when Miami and its Dolphin Stadium (now Sun Life Stadium) played host to the Orange Bowl on New Years' Day -- when Virginia Tech topped Cincinnati -- as well as the championship game Jan. 8, as Florida claimed the title with a 24-14 win over Oklahoma.

In the 2012 Orange Bowl, West Virginia set nine records, including most points in a half and most points in a game, defeating Clemson, 70-33. The 70 points scored by the Mountaineers were a record for any bowl game, breaking a record set just a week earlier in the Alamo Bowl.