The Bluebonnet Bowl was a minor bowl, but a good one, that was played in Houston from 1959-87. It typically featured a team from the state of Texas against a non-Texas team.
The game was played at Rice Stadium from 1959-67, then switched to the Astrodome from 1968-84 and then back to Rice Stadium for the two games in 1985 and 1986. The last Bluebonnet Bowl was in the Astrodome. Texas defeated Pitt, 32-27, in 1987.
Clemson defeated TCU, 23-7, in the first Bluebonnet Bowl in 1959.
Houston was without a bowl game until 2000 when the Houston Bowl (now the Texas Bowl) gave the football-crazed city a postseason game yet again.
The bowl was named for the state flower of the Lone Star State. In the years it was held in the Astrodome, it was called the “Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl”.
The now-defunct Southwest Conference typically sent its runner-up to the game with the winner going to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
