Decades before Pat Williams and Jimmy Hewitt co-founded the Orlando Magic, before Arnie moved to Bay Hill and turned Orlando into a golf mecca, before Phil Rawlins, Kay Rawlins and Adrian Heath came up with the concept of Orlando City and turned Central Florida into an international soccer destination, before UCF played its first football game in a driving rainstorm at St. Leo, and even before Walt Disney’s animated mouse transformed 27,000 acres of Central Florida swampland into one of the world’s top tourist destinations, there was a football game.
A football game that, through 80 years of names, sponsors, realignments and reinventions, has endured as one of Orlando’s most storied, significant traditions.
Happy 80th anniversary, Tangerine Bowl/Citrus Bowl/Capital One Bowl/Cheez-It Bowl. Whatever you call it, just make sure to use the name with respect and reverence and take a moment to realize what this venerable old bowl game and the stadium it is played in has meant for our city.
Florida Citrus Sports, the non-profit organization that now runs the Citrus Bowl, launched a season-long campaign celebrating the upcoming 80th edition of its signature game on Friday night by honoring longtime civic leader George Stuart Jr. — a former Orlando city councilman, a longtime state senator and FCS’ second-ever board president who has been a benefactor of the game since he was an infant.
That’s right, before his first birthday, George Jr. attended the inaugural Tangerine Bowl in 1947 in his mother’s arms while his father George Stuart Sr. — one of the game’s earliest organizers and financial backers — worked the crowd and solicited donors to make sure the inaugural game wasn’t the only game.
“Before we became one of the top 20 markets in the United States, the bowl game was one of the earliest forms…
Source link : https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/05/17/citrus-bowl-80th-anniversary-orlando-ucf-gators-fsu-canes-mike-bianchi-commentary/
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Publish date : 2025-05-17 19:38:00
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