Music City Bowl Tickets

When a city decides to invest in a new stadium for its NFL team, it often wants to make sure to prioritize everything that can be done to maximize the stadium’s value. For the City of Nashville, that meant using the new stadium being built for the Tennessee Titans for more than just the eight home games the team would play every year.

To that end, the Nashville Sports Council began talking with the SEC about a new bowl game to be called the Music City Bowl. Once the right partnerships were in place, organizers were able to move forward with the plan. On December 29, 1998, the inaugural Music City Bowl was played at Vanderbilt Stadium (ending with a 38-7 Virginia Tech win over Alabama). The following year, with the stadium finally completed, the bowl game moved to its new home, Nissan Stadium.

The SEC has had an affiliation with the game since its inception. A deal wasn’t struck with the Big East until 1999. A team from the Big East played in the game through the 2001 season. The following year it was replaced with the Big Ten conference. Four years later the ACC took the Big Ten’s place. Since 2014, the game has had a tie in with the SEC and either an ACC or Big Ten team.