Hyundai Sun Bowl

The Hyundai Sun Bowl is a college football bowl game held each year in El Paso, Texas. First played in 1935, it is one of the oldest bowl games in the country, behind only the Rose Bowl and tied with the Orange and Sugar bowls. The game pits a Pac-12 team against an ACC team.

In the 2011 Sun Bowl, Utah overcame a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat Georgia Tech, 30-27, in overtime.

The Sun Bowl originated in 1934 as a game matching up an All-Star team from the local high school against another top opponent. The game was named the "Sun Bowl" after a community poll selected the title. The bowl was surrounded by a week's worth of events that added to the event's reputation.

The bowl was played by the high school team in 1935, and it didn't actually become a college bowl game until the next year. In its first year between college teams, the bowl hosted New Mexico State and Hardin-Simmons, a game that ended in a tie. From then on, the Sun Bowl was a college postseason match.

The game usually invited the Border Conference champion in its early years, placing it up against an at-large opponent. The bowl had become fairly successful, and was doing well in terms of attendance and financial gain for the next several decades.

By the 1980s, it was in need of more funds, and it signed on to its first sponsor, John Hancock Financial Services. John Hancock became the title sponsor in 1989, as the bowl aimed to further increase teams' incentives to play by offering a larger payout and better TV rights.

The move was most significant, though, in that the Sun Bowl became the first bowl to secure a title sponsorship. Future sponsors included Norwest (1996-98), Wells Fargo (1999-2003), Vitalis (2004-05) and Brut (2006-09). Hyundai signed on as the title sponsor in 2010, signing a contract through 2014.

The Sun Bowl has been contracted with CBS Sports since 1968, the longest continuous network relationship in college bowls. The two parties signed a new contract in 2010 continuing the partnership through 2013. The bowl's agreements with its conference tie-ins also run through 2013, bringing the third selection from the Pac-10 and the third from the ACC to the Sun Bowl.

The Sun Bowl is a football stadium on the UT-El Paso campus in El Paso, Texas. It is the home stadium of the UTEP Miners and also hosts the Hyundai Sun Bowl each year. The stadium has been open since 1963 and sits 51,500.

The stadium was built in the early 1960s in large part to provide a home for the Sun Bowl, which had previously been held on a high school field and then on UTEP's track and field stadium, which could hold only 50,000. Hoping to expand the game's attendance and national audience, the organizers decided to build a new stadium for the game.

It underwent its first renovation in 1969, adding a press box to the 30,000-seat stadium. It was expanded again in 1982, when it reached its current capacity thatnks to the addition of north endzone stands and expansions.

Now the stadium is used mostly for UTEP and the bowl, though it occasionally also hosts major concerts. For a short time, it hosted the development league soccer team El Paso Patriots, though they shortly found a new field.

The Sun Bowl also is the closest major stadium to a foreign country, less than half a mile from Mexican city Ciudad Juarez and the Rio Grande River.