The California Bowl was a post-season
college football bowl game played annually at Bulldog Stadium in Fresno,
California, from 1981 to 1991. The games matched the championship teams
from the Big West Conference (formerly the PCAA) with teams from the
MAC. During the bowl's existence it was generally the first bowl game
played during the postseason. It was regarded as one of the
lower-profile bowl games in that the conferences involved were
mid-majors, and was one of the first bowls to restrict its television
marketing efforts to the medium of cable television. Due to the purchase
of naming rights by the California Raisin Advisory Board, the California
bowl was sometimes referred to as the California Raisin Bowl in
contemporary accounts. This is not to be confused with the bowl, played
1946-1949, called the Raisin Bowl (also played in Fresno). Fresno
State largely dominated this game, playing in five of the 11 games and
winning four of them.
In 1992, the game moved to Las Vegas, Nevada and became the Las Vegas
Bowl.
