New Orleans Bowl

The New Orleans Bowl is an NCAA-sanctioned post-season college football bowl game that has been played annually at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana since 2001. The game was sponsored by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts from 2002 to 2004 and was officially called the Wyndham New Orleans Bowl. R+L Carriers replaced Wyndham as the sponsor in 2006, and thus it became officially known as the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl.

The game pits a team from Conference USA versus a team from the Sun Belt Conference. From the beginning of the New Orleans Bowl until recently that automatically went to the Sun Belt champion, but since the conference earned a second bid, to the GoDaddy.com Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, the bowl now has the second choice of which team to take after the GoDaddy.com Bowl. Since the agreement, the Sun Belt champion has played in that game twice (counting the 2012 matchup). If Conference USA does not have enough bowl eligible teams the bowl will choose an at-large team, which they did in 2011 when Mountain West Conference member San Diego State was picked to play.

In 2001, the Sun Belt signed a temporary contract to play against the 5th-ranked team from the Mountain West Conference.

In the inaugural game, the Colorado State Rams came to New Orleans, and defeated North Texas, 45–20. Starting in 2002, the Sun Belt signed a multi-year contract with Conference USA, and the two conferences began their bowl rivalry that December, when North Texas played then-Conference USA member Cincinnati (and won).

Due to damage by Hurricane Katrina to the Superdome, where the game is usually played, the 2005 game was played on December 20 in Lafayette, Louisiana at Cajun Field on the campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and was dubbed the New Orleans Bowl at Lafayette. The game returned to the Superdome on December 22, 2006, with a new corporate sponsor in freight company R+L Carriers, renaming the game the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. The game featured Troy, co-champions of the Sun Belt Conference facing Rice, making their first bowl game visit in 45 years, their last appearance being the Bluebonnet Bowl. Troy defeated Rice, 41–17.

The current champions of the New Orleans Bowl are the Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns who beat San Diego State 32-30 in the 2011 game.