Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas

The Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas is a college football postseason game played at Reliant Stadium in Houston each year. Initiated as a replacement for the Houston Bowl and first contested in 2006, the former Texas Bowl matches up bowl-eligible teams from the Big 12 and Big Ten conferences. The 2011 edition of the renamed bowl saw Texas A&M defeat Northwestern.

With the Houston Bowl in financial trouble and without a sponsor following the 2005 game, organizers were able to secure a deal to have Lone Star Sports & Entertainment take over management of the bowl and sell TV and naming rights to the NFL Network. Those deals led to the launch of the Texas Bowl, created to continue the longtime tradition of postseason college football games played in Houston (dating back to the Bluebonnet Bowl).

The inaugural Texas Bowl was played at Reliant Stadium in Houston -- and aired on the NFL Network -- on December 28, 2006, when Rutgers defeated Kansas State, 37-10, before a crowd of 52,210, the largest crowd to witness a bowl game in Houston not involving a Texas team since 1972.

For the bowl's first few years, the game featured a team from the Big 12 Conference against an opponent from either the Big East Conference or Conference-USA (C-USA). But in 2007, Texas Christian University took the place of the Big 12 representative (due to BCS commitments) and topped C-USA's Houston, 20-13. The following year, Rice University claimed the school's first postseason win since 1954 by beating Western Michigan in the Texas Bowl.

After Navy defeated Missouri to win the 2009 game, ESPN Regional Television agreed to become partners with the Texas Bowl and air the game in following seasons. Conference affiliations related to the game also changed in 2010, the first year of a multiyear arrangement to have bowl-eligible teams from the Big 12 and Big Ten conferences oppose each other in the Texas Bowl. In that game, Illinois defeated Baylor, 38-14.

In 2011, the game was renamed to the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas. Texas A&M defeated Northwestern, becoming the first Big 12 team to win the game.