History of the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida

The Gator Bowl started as a 1945 plan by Jacksonville business leaders to fill the slow week after Christmas with a New Year's Day football game.

The bowl’s own history tells it this way: Maurice Cherry looked out his Main Street office window the week after Christmas 1944 and found Jacksonville exceedingly dull and lifeless. Since the winter carnivals at the turn of the century, local business and civic leaders had sought ways to liven up that season. Touring professional teams featuring Red Grange and Ernie Nevers had been New Year's box-office duds in the 1920s, and Mayor John Alsop had tried to begin a Jacksonville bowl game in the 1930s but was unsuccessful.

Local sportscaster Al Jennings broached the idea to the Downtown Lions Club in late October 1945, the history says, but the Lions' drive sputtered and stalled. When it became apparent the effort would come up short, Charles Hilty Sr., Maurice Cherry, Raymond McCarthy Sr. and W.C. Ivey put up $10,000 of their own money to bankroll the game. All they needed were two teams and 8,000 people in Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, which the bowl calls the state-of-the-art 1925 brace of concrete bleachers.

The matchup came together late. Georgia and Tulsa went to Houston's Oil Bowl instead, so Hilty approached his friend Peahead Walker, the Wake Forest coach. South Carolina's athletic director Rex Enright was finishing his wartime enlistment at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, and on Dec. 7, 1945 the two schools agreed to play in Jacksonville on New Year's Day, mostly to settle a 13-13 tie from Thanksgiving.

Only 7,362 people came to the first game in Jacksonville, and the bowl's history says the backers took a bath, then regrouped and agreed to try again.

The name came just before kickoff. The history says Jacksonville sportswriters were already calling the game the Gator Bowl when the matchup was announced; one story credits a Chicago sportscaster with first saying Alligator Bowl, while most hold that Walter McRae Sr. and Steve Freel, both fans of the Florida Gators, sold the association on the name. The Gator Bowl Association adopted the name and elected officers just four days before the game.

Wake Forest won its only Gator Bowl, according to the bowl’s team records, which list the Demon Deacons at 1-0-0 and South Carolina at 0-4-0 across four appearances. Not until the fourth game, when Clemson met Missouri, did the Jacksonville game begin to see light, the history says, and community support broadened from there.

Clemson leads the bowl's appearance list with 10 games in Jacksonville, followed by Florida with 9 and Georgia Tech with 8.

The table below copies the top of the Gator Bowl team records page. That page has not been fully updated: it still shows Virginia at 0-2-0, although the bowl's home page shows Virginia played in the 81st game, and a few schools appear twice.

By conference, the same page lists the ACC and the SEC with 42 appearances each, the ACC at 26-15-2 and the SEC at 24-18-1. Its largest attendance entry is 84,129 for Florida State vs. West Virginia. The bowl history lists Heisman Trophy winners George Rogers, Pat Sullivan, Earl Campbell, John David Crow, Desmond Howard and Lamar Jackson among the players who appeared in Jacksonville, along with Dan Marino, Archie Manning, Larry Csonka and Peyton Manning, and coaches Bobby Bowden, Steve Spurrier and Vince Dooley.

Several of the bowl's individual records come from Jacksonville games of the last two decades. Graham Harrell of Texas Tech holds the passing marks for attempts (69), completions (44) and yards (407) from the January 1, 2008 game against Virginia, and the longest touchdown pass, 99 yards, went from Tommy Armstrong to Quincy Enunwa for Nebraska against Georgia on January 1, 2014. The team records add the game totals record: Georgia Tech vs. West Virginia on January 1, 2007 produced 121 plays and 928 yards of offense.

TaxSlayer holds the bowl's title sponsorship, and the bowl said the December 2025 game marked TaxSlayer's 15th year as title sponsor.

The bowl’s June 5, 2025 release quoted TaxSlayer CEO Jamie Saxe on that milestone and said the 81st annual game would match a team from the Southeastern Conference against an opponent from the Atlantic Coast Conference. It was played Saturday, December 27, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. on ABC, on Bill Gay Grounds at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville. Chairperson Sara Pomposo spoke for the bowl's green jacket membership, the volunteers behind the game.

The mission statement says the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl exists to provide Northeast Florida with the very best in college athletics and related activities in order to maximize positive impact on the area's economy, national image and community pride. The bowl office is at 1 Gator Bowl Boulevard, Jacksonville FL 32202, phone 904-798-1700, beside the stadium.

The 82nd TaxSlayer Gator Bowl is scheduled for Wednesday, December 30, 2026 at 11:30 a.m. on Bill Gay Grounds at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville.

That date comes from the bowl’s home page, which also looks back at the 81st game week featuring Virginia and Mizzou. The game will be played in a smaller stadium than usual. The Jaguars’ Stadium of the Future FAQ says capacity for the 2026 season will be decreased to 42,465 after permanent seat removal and temporary seating, with 27,308 seats offline, 22,005 of them in the upper bowl.

The bowl pitches the trip as a holiday stay as well as a game: its home page points visitors to 22 miles of beaches at Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach and Mayport, and to Amelia Island, just off the coast of Northeast Florida.

For the December 30, 2026 game, JTA's Gameday Xpress shuttle is scheduled to begin boarding at 9:30 a.m. from two downtown Jacksonville lots, the Kings Avenue Parking Garage and FSCJ Downtown.

The Jacksonville Transportation Authority Gameday Xpress page lists the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl on December 30 with an 11:30 a.m. kickoff and says the last returning bus leaves one hour after the game ends. Only the Kings Avenue Parking Garage Park and Ride, at 1201 Kings Ave, and the Florida State College at Jacksonville Downtown Campus lot, at 900 N. Laura Street, will be open for the bowl. Passes are round trip, per person, with parking included; a single-game pass at the downtown lots is $10, and the service is cashless through the MyJTA app.

The bowl's own transportation page had not caught up on October 18, 2026: it still showed a 5:30 p.m. shuttle start and a Southside JTB Park-n-Ride lot at 7000 Philips Highway, matching the evening game of December 2025, so the JTA schedule is the newer of the two. The same bowl page lists parking passes for all EverBank Stadium lots at $40, lots opening at least four hours before kickoff, day-of bus parking at $100 through the bowl office, and a St. Johns River Taxi at a $20 special event round trip from Riverfront Plaza on the Northbank and the Southbank Hotel dock.

The Jaguars say the Gator Bowl will play in Gainesville for one season, December 2027 or January 2028, and then return to the renovated Jacksonville stadium.

The Stadium of the Future FAQ sets out the schedule below. It describes EverBank Stadium as city-owned, hosting the Florida vs. Georgia game, the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl, concerts and civic events, and says the renovated stadium will have a base capacity of more than 63,000, with the ability to expand to more than 70,000. The Jaguars will play in Orlando for the 2027 season.

The City of Jacksonville approved the deal behind that schedule in 2024. Jacksonville City Council records in the Legistar legislation database show Ordinance 2024-0904-E, introduced on June 11, 2024 at the request of the Mayor, which authorizes an amended and restated stadium lease, a stadium development agreement, a non-relocation agreement and a community benefits agreement with the Jaguars. The council approved it 14-1-2 on June 25, 2024.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl history, home page, transportation page, June 2025 release and team and individual records pages, JTA's Gameday Xpress page, the Jaguars' Stadium of the Future FAQ, and Jacksonville City Council legislation records.