Replacing the Houston Bowl Speculation surfaced questioning the long-term survival of the former
Houston Bowl. The three-year contract with
EV1.net expired on December 31, 2005, leaving the bowl game without a title sponsor. A college football official told the
Houston Chronicle that the bowl was in danger of ceasing operations, as a result of the game losing its title sponsor and because the Houston Bowl still owed roughly $600,000 to the
Big 12 and
Mountain West conferences following the 2005 game. However, the NCAA approved Lone Star Sports & Entertainment, a division of the
Houston Texans, who also play in Reliant Stadium, to take over game management. In July 2006, the
NFL Network acquired TV rights and naming rights to the bowl.
Texas Bowl introduction The Texas Bowl name and logo were officially unveiled on August 10, 2006, at a press conference along with conference affiliations for the bowl spots. The
Big 12,
Big East and
Conference USA will be affiliated with the game, as well as
Texas Christian University of the
Mountain West. The 2006 matchup featured teams from the Big 12 and Big East Conferences. On December 3, 2006,
Rutgers accepted an invitation to play
Kansas State in the inaugural Texas Bowl. "We're ecstatic about having Rutgers," Texas Bowl director David Brady said. "This is a top-15 team that was three yards away from a BCS game. We couldn't be happier to have them here." 2010 marked the eleventh consecutive year a bowl game has played in Houston, and the 40th year overall with a bowl game there (the Bluebonnet Bowl lasted 29 years). It was also announced on December 30, 2009, that
ESPN Events would take over as part owner and operator of the game, while Lone Star Sports and Entertainment will maintain a stake in the bowl, and would be carried on
ESPN.
Sponsors On April 12, 2011, ESPN announced
Meineke Car Care signed a three-year title sponsorship deal beginning in 2011, changing name of the bowl to the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas. On February 12, 2014, it was announced that
AdvoCare will be the title sponsor for the bowl game. That sponsorship concluded after the 2016 game. On November 15, 2017,
Academy Sports + Outdoors became the new title sponsor of the bowl. That sponsorship concluded after the 2019 game. On December 14, 2020,
Mercari was announced as the new title sponsor of the game. The 2020 game was later canceled due to COVID-19 issues. This arrangement remained in place through the 2023 edition. On December 4, 2024, Kinder's Flavors was named as the new title sponsor.
Conference tie-ins On May 17, 2007, it was announced Conference USA would have a team in the
2007 Texas Bowl. The Texas Bowl has a rotating commitment with the Big East Conference and Conference USA for 2006–09 while the Big 12 Conference will have a team in all four of those games. In 2007,
TCU took the place of the Big 12 team when
Kansas and
Oklahoma were put into the
BCS, and
Houston, a "
home team," represented C-USA. The conferences would receive $612,500 each as per the rules of the agreements as usually, the Big East (or Big 12) would have received $750,000 for playing and C-USA would have received a $500,000 stipend for their team playing.
Issues According to
Sports Illustrated, in 2008 the bowl required
Western Michigan University to purchase 11,000 tickets at full price in order to accept the invitation to play in the bowl. The university was only able to sell 548 tickets at that price, forcing it to accept a $462,535 loss, before travel expenses, to pay for the privilege of playing in the bowl. The 2020 edition, slated for December 31 between
TCU and
Arkansas, was cancelled on December 29 due to
COVID-19 issues within the TCU program. ==Game results==