The Outback Bowl, which was once known as the Hall of Fame Bowl, technically became the Tampa Bay Bowl in March when that sponsorship deal ended. Three months later, it’s now the ReliaQuest Bowl.
The college football bowl game announced the new sponsorship deal and name on Thursday.
ReliaQuest Bowl is the new name for the former Outback Bowl. Outback ended its title sponsorship & the bowl had been renamed the Tampa Bay Bowl for the past 3 months
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) June 9, 2022
The Outback Bowl is dead. Say hello to the ReliaQuest Bowl pic.twitter.com/zGTyB3AiH2
— Matt Baker (@MBakerTBTimes) June 9, 2022
One of the joys of bowl sponsorships is realizing you’ve never heard of the company in question before and realizing this game will be the only time you probably ever come across the name in your life. As for ReliaQuest, they’re a cybersecurity company based out of Tampa Bay, Florida, so that checks out.
ReliaQuest CEO Brian Murphy told Tampa Bay Business Journal that he is extremely excited about the opportunity to sponsor the game.
“It’s really exciting. It’s one of the cooler things that we have done, for me personally,” Murphy said. “College football is one of the biggest sports franchises in the world, and we say this all the time, but cybersecurity is a team sport.”
The bowl game has traditionally pitted Big Ten teams against SEC teams and last season’s matchup, the final Outback Bowl, was a 24-10 win by the SEC’s Arkansas over the Big Ten’s Penn State.
Naturally, whenever we get a new bowl name, especially one that’s a relatively unknown entity or strange name, the comments from around the college football world are gold. This was no exception. Also, the announcement clearly revealed that people loved the Outback Bowl, or at least its Bloomin’ Onion mascot.
The ReliaQuest sounds like the search for the off-brand national championship https://t.co/LF4a2LGD4R
— Steven 🇵🇸 (@akulawolf) June 9, 2022
I’m still calling it the Outback Bowl. https://t.co/b6LKDnY1MJ
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) June 9, 2022
I am going to keep calling it the Outback Bowl. We’re all out back of somewhere
— Alex Kirshner (@alex_kirshner) June 9, 2022
We’re still going to call it the Outback Bowl but it’s pretty hilarious the name Tampa Bay Bowl didn’t make it through one entire off-season.
— 🇸🇲 Sickos Committee 🇸🇲 (@SickosCommittee) June 9, 2022
Not calling it that https://t.co/cjwxKxri29
— Team Speed Kills (@TeamSpeedKills) June 9, 2022
Arkansas enters the 2022 season as the defending ReliaQuest Bowl champs.
That’s an awful name for a bowl lol https://t.co/xWjpMrXmSR
— Jonathan Acosta (@_jacosta) June 9, 2022
