Auburn’s Outback Bowl History
Ah, bowl season – the best time of the year!
As the calendar changes over to the new decade, the Auburn Tigers and fans will be ringing in the New Year in Tampa at the Outback Bowl. The 34th edition of the bowl game will be Auburn’s fifth appearance. This will be the second straight year that Auburn has faced a first-time opponent in the bowl game – Purdue last year, Minnesota this time around.
Here you will find a comprehensive look at Auburn’s Outback Bowl history and uniforms across the Tigers’ 82 years of bowls.
Uniform History
The Hall of Fame Bowl was born in 1986. Following the 1989 season, Auburn made their first appearance in the game. It would the first time the Tigers played in Tampa Bay since facing Florida in 1948.
Reggie Slack and Co. slashed the Ohio State Buckeyes to a 31-14 victory.
Auburn wore some massive bowl patches on the shoulders for the game. Ohio State didn’t wear a patch at all. This would be the final time that a bowl patch would appear on the shoulders for Auburn.
The Tigers would return to rainy Tampa after the 1995 season to face Penn State for the first time. This would also be the first game that Outback Steakhouse would join on as presenting sponsor.
Auburn struggled to get anything going and would fall to the Nittany Lions 43-13.
It would be over a decade before the Tigers would return to Florida’s Gulf Coast. Auburn would face Northwestern, their second first-time opponent in three Outback Bowls.
The game was a wild one, ending on a Wes Byrum field goal in overtime. Northwestern’s Franz Kafka would set bowl records for completions (47), attempts (78), passing yards (532), and interceptions (5).
After the improbable run to the 2013 National Championship Game, Auburn limped to an 8-3 record and would face Wisconsin in their 4th Outback Bowl appearance.
The Tigers would place the bowl patch between the Under Armour logo and player numbers, following suit from the championship game. Thankfully, this would be the last time the patch would be placed in the odd spot.
Auburn would wear #31 decals on the back of the helmet in honor of freshman Jakell Mitchell, who was shot and killed three weeks before the game.
Under Armour would provide the Tigers will some new gear featuring an interesting eagle face on the gloves and base layers. The long sleeve shirts utilized the silhouette eagle logo for the first time, the same logo being worn by both basketball teams now.
I think PJ Fleck is a wonderful football coach. What he accomplished at Western Michigan was incredible, and being able to enjoy success so early at Minnesota is further testament to his coaching skills.
As good a coach as he may be, PJ Fleck’s aesthetic preferences are, well, questionable.
During his time at Western Michigan, the Broncos fully embraced the “Row the Boat” mantra, incorporating boat oars into the uniform designs. That carried over when Fleck moved on to Minnesota. Personally, it blows my mind that universities allow a coach’s personal branding to trump that of the school’s. A seasonal mantra that’s commonplace in collegiate sports is entirely different that Fleck’s “Row the Boat” branding.
The Golden Gophers revealed new uniforms prior to the 2018 season that continued to embody the oar motif. The numbers and collars have an oar and canoe pattern sublimated. The helmets feature a wood-grained stripe, mimicking wooden oars. They previously had the paddle on the back of the helmet, but have since removed that. The player numbers are placed inside a compass decal.
Throughout the 2019 campaign, Minnesota mixed and matched their uniforms to not wear a duplicate combination once. The base uniform arsenal features four jerseys and pants (maroon, gold, white, and grey), and three helmets (maroon, gold, & chrome gold). The Gophers really capitalized by utilizing new decals – including featuring the mascot, Goldy! – and mixing helmet shells and facemasks.
Minnesota ended with 11 different helmet designs in their 12 games this year. If counting just jerseys and pants, the Gophers had 7 combinations in 2019. That makes it difficult predict any team’s uniform.
Auburn is the home team in Tampa and are expected to wear navy. That will help limit Minnesota’s possible jerseys to two – white or gold. As much as I would love to see more color-on-color matchups, I can’t see the Gophers wearing their gold in the bowl game.
I expect the 2020 Outback Bowl will pit Auburn’s traditional home uniform combination against Minnesota in white jerseys. Beyond that is just a guess. Ideally, a maroon helmet and gold pants would create the best color combination on the field. And selfishly, I’d love to see the full-body Goldy decals make a return, but would be happy with the block-M on both sides of the shell.
Field History
The Hall of Fame Bowl made for a rather colorful design – something that has held true for most of the game’s history.
Team colors outline the respective endzones and out-of-bounds areas. The 20-yardlines were outlined in team colors and the 50-yardline featured Ohio State’s red and Auburn’s navy.
Conditions were atrocious for the 1996 edition. Rain fell for most of the game and the field became a muddy mess. Penn State’s all-white uniforms slowly turned to a rich brown and green.
The colorful outlines were removed for this season, only featuring team colors in the endzones. Now in the second year of having Outback Steakhouse as a sponsor, their logo was placed outside the 20s and on the 50 with the primary logo.
For the 2010 game, much of the color was stripped away from the field. No more team-colored endzones or sidelines, just white lettering with purple or navy outlines.
The Outback logo multiplied and now is placed in four areas on the 25s.
Auburn’s latest trip to Tampa saw a color explosion on the field. Much like the Hall of Fame Bowl, team colors are featured in and around the endzones. The school-specific wordmarks in the endzone are replaced with a standard block font. And in a surprising sense of restraint, two Outback logos are removing from the field.
Looking at last year’s Outback Bowl field, it looks like they’ve once again simplified the field a bit. The endzones didn’t have a color background and only one color was used to outline the end of the field.
(image via Keith Murphy, WHO-HD Ch. 13 News)
If we base this year’s design solely on last year, it’ll look something like this:
This image will continue to be updated throughout the week leading up to game day. You can check out nearly every bowl game field that Auburn has played on here.
Bowl History
Auburn football has played in 43 bowl games to a 24-17-2 record. That began back in 1937, when Auburn met Villanova in Havana, Cuba, the first game between two American universities on foreign soil. Despite the riots and gunfire raining outside the stadium, the game went on. Auburn led 7-0 for most of the game, but Villanova would block a punt in the closing minutes to tie the game at 7. The Tigers would tie in their first bowl game – and they wore orange jerseys doing so.
Auburn would get their first bowl victory the following season, defeating Michigan State in the 1938 Orange Bowl. It would be 16 years later that Auburn would make another bowl game, facing Texas Tech in the 1954 Gator Bowl. Auburn would wear orange again – Texas Tech would wear red. That would also be the debut of Tech’s Masked Rider mascot.
The Tigers would play in the Gator Bowl for three straight seasons, including becoming the first team to play in the same bowl game twice in the same calendar year. Auburn and Texas Tech faced off on January 1, 1954 following the 1953 season. In an attempt to garner more attention, the Gator Bowl moved to December 31. Auburn would face Baylor on New Year’s Eve 1954. The Tigers would be paired with conference foe Vanderbilt.
Bowl patches would first appear on an Auburn football uniform for the 1982 Tangerine Bowl, when the Tigers faced off against Doug Flutie’s Boston College Eagles. The patches would replace the TV numbers on the shoulders, rather than be placed on the chest as is common today.
This would be commonplace for the rest of the decade, with the 1990 Hall of Fame Bowl being the final occurrence. Twice during the 80s, Auburn would wear a single bowl patch on one shoulder and an SEC Champions patch on the other. A few times, the game patch was actually customized to include Auburn colors and logos.
For even more Auburn bowl game stories, be sure to check out the Auburn Uniform Database on Facebook and Instagram.
Bowl season is one of the best times of the year. Seeing Auburn compete against other teams for the first time ever is one of my favorite aspects of bowl games. A few years ago, I made this graphic showcasing all the FBS teams that Auburn had not faced. Since then, a handful have been crossed off – and Minnesota is another check on that list!
To correspond with the graphic, I wrote an article for the E2C Network to detail a few teams I’d most like to see. Notre Dame remains at the top of that list, but I also mentioned that Minnesota is a special matchup for me. My grandfather was a Golden Gopher before moving to Auburn where he met my grandmother.
Bowl games are also one of the most popular projects on this site. Every single uniform and patch worn during the bowl games are available here, and a majority of the field designs are also available. You can also find uniform matchups from 2013 to today, viewing by season or by team.
Enjoy learning about Auburn uniforms and history? Want to see more like this? Be sure to follow the Auburn Uniform Database, like the AUD Facebook page, Instagram page, and follow me on Twitter for even more uniform news. You can also purchase your favorite team’s merchandise through Fanatics, with a portion of your sale going to support this website.
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