Most bowl games know exactly who they are. Two conferences, one tie in, same matchup shape every December.
The Gasparilla Bowl is the opposite. It has tie ins with eight conferences. It has been won by the ACC, the SEC, the American and Conference USA. It was once sponsored by a bitcoin company that paid ESPN in bitcoin. It started life in a baseball stadium in St. Petersburg and now fills an NFL building in Tampa. Nobody knows who is showing up until December, and that is most of the fun.
The 2026 Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl kicks off Friday, Dec. 18 at 2:30 p.m. ET on ESPN at Raymond James Stadium.
2026 Gasparilla Bowl: the details
| Date | Friday, December 18, 2026 |
| Kickoff | 2:30 p.m. ET |
| TV | ESPN |
| Venue | Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, Florida |
| Address | 4201 N Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33607 |
| Edition | 18th overall |
| Title sponsor | Union Home Mortgage |
| Operator | ESPN Events |
| Trophy | The Treasure Trophy |
The bowl draws from a wide pool rather than a fixed pair of leagues. Its tie in structure reaches the ACC, Big 12 and SEC on one side and the American, Conference USA, the MAC and the Mountain West on the other, which is why the matchups swing from Wake Forest against Missouri one year to NC State against Memphis the next.
Last December: NC State turned it into a defensive clinic
The 2025 game was not close. NC State beat Memphis 31-7, and the most interesting part is who took the trophy home.
Caden Fordham, a linebacker, was named MVP. That is worth pausing on. Look through this bowl’s MVP list and it is quarterbacks and receivers almost the whole way down, Matt Grothe and Mohamed Sanu and Blake Bortles and Jacoby Brissett and Sam Hartman and DJ Lagway. Fordham is the first defensive player to win it outright since the single MVP format began in 2017.
Two other things happened that night. CJ Bailey scored three all purpose touchdowns, tying the bowl record shared by Sanu, Latavius Murray and Josh Reese. And Dave Doeren became the second head coach to win this game more than once, having also taken the 2014 edition when Brissett was the MVP. Doc Holliday got there first, winning three times with Marshall in 2011, 2015 and 2018.
That gives the Wolfpack a perfect record in Tampa: two trips, two wins, two very different teams.
It also makes NC State the rare program with a split personality across Florida’s two December bowls. Perfect in Tampa, and 3-3 across six trips to the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando, where Philip Rivers is still the only two time MVP in that game’s history and Russell Wilson won it in 2010. No school has more combined history in the state’s non playoff bowls.
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The ACC has never lost this game
Four appearances, four wins. No other conference is unbeaten here, and the ACC’s run is the quiet trend of the bowl’s recent history.
- NC State, 2014. A 34-27 win over UCF with Jacoby Brissett taking MVP.
- Wake Forest, 2022. A 27-17 win over Missouri, and the first time this bowl ever matched two Power Five teams.
- Georgia Tech, 2023. A 30-17 win over UCF, with running back Jamal Haynes as MVP in Brent Key’s second season.
- NC State, 2025. The 31-7 defensive win over Memphis.
For Wake Forest fans in particular, that 2022 result carries extra weight. The Demon Deacons have never played in the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando, but they own a Treasure Trophy in Tampa.
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The 2022 game was Sam Hartman’s last act
Of everything that has happened in Tampa, the 2022 edition holds up best as a story.
Wake Forest came in at 7-5 having lost four of their last five. Missouri came in at 6-6 and missing four contributors to opt outs and the portal. Everyone knew it was Sam Hartman’s final game in a Demon Deacons uniform; nobody yet knew whether he was leaving for the NFL or the transfer portal.
He went 23 of 36 for 280 yards and three touchdowns, two of them to Taylor Morin, including the 16 yard strike with 2:33 left that put the game away at 27-17. A.T. Perry caught eleven passes for 116 yards, still the single game reception record for this bowl. The defense closed it out with back to back sacks that pushed Missouri into a fourth and 33, with Tyler Williams finishing with two on the night, a total that still shares the bowl record.
Thirteen days later Hartman announced he was transferring to Notre Dame. He left Wake Forest with more than 13,000 career passing yards and 110 touchdown passes, an ACC record.
It was also the first Gasparilla Bowl to feature two Power Five programs, in front of 34,370 on a clear 49 degree night. For a bowl that spent its first decade in a baseball stadium taking whoever it could get, that game was the arrival.
Wake Forest, for the record, is now 12-6 across 18 bowl appearances, and went 9-4 last season under first year head coach Jake Dickert. The smallest school in the Power Four travels well in December.
UCF has been here more than anyone
Six appearances, a 3-3 record, and a history in this game that spans three different conference affiliations. UCF has played here as a member of Conference USA, the American and the Big 12, which tells you as much about the last two decades of realignment as any chart could.
The Knights own most of the offensive records in the book. The 2019 win over Marshall finished 48-25 and set four of them in a single night: most points by one team, most combined points, most team total yards and most rushing yards. Dillon Gabriel was the MVP. Two years later Ryan O’Keefe put up 251 all purpose yards against Florida in front of the biggest crowd this bowl has ever drawn, and that number still leads the individual record list. Blake Bortles took MVP in 2012, and even in the 2014 loss, Josh Reese caught three touchdowns, a record that still stands.
The losses have all come against the ACC, in 2009 against Rutgers when the Big East still existed, then NC State in 2014 and Georgia Tech in 2023.
Here is the part that matters going forward: UCF is in the Big 12 now. That keeps them in the Gasparilla pool and also makes them eligible for the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando, a game they have never played despite it being staged in their own city.
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Florida and the biggest crowd this bowl has seen
The 2021 game drew 63,669 people, more than double any other edition, because Florida was playing and Raymond James filled up. UCF won that one 29-17.
The Gators got their answer three years later, beating Tulane 33-8 in 2024 behind DJ Lagway’s 305 passing yards, still the passing record for this game. Florida’s defense set a record of its own that night, allowing fewer yards than any team in the bowl’s history.
Attendance has swung wildly ever since, from 63,669 in 2021 down to 13,336 last December. A nearby fan base is worth more to this bowl than a good matchup, which is worth remembering when the teams get announced.
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The American is the backbone of this bowl
Everyone talks about which Power Four team lands here, but the conference with the most history in Tampa is the American. Eleven appearances and a 6-5 record, more games than any other league, counting the Big East years that the American inherited in 2013.
That lineage runs from South Florida winning the very first edition in 2008 to Rutgers in 2009, Louisville in 2010, Temple in 2017, UCF in 2019 and 2021, and Memphis on the wrong end of last December’s result.
Tulane is the most recent American program to make the trip, reaching the 2024 game under Jon Sumrall against a Florida team playing an hour and a half from campus in front of 41,472 people. The Green Wave have become a fixture in the December conversation over the last few seasons, and a return to Tampa with a neutral crowd would look nothing like that night did.
Conference USA is right behind with ten appearances and a 5-5 record, but that ledger is a realignment museum. Marshall went 3-1 here and now plays in the Sun Belt. Southern Miss lost the 2010 game and has moved on too. UCF left the league years ago.
Of the twelve schools currently in Conference USA, exactly one has ever played in this bowl: FIU, which went 0-2 in 2011 and 2017. Eleven CUSA programs have never been to Tampa in December at all, and the league still holds a tie in. For a conference that has watched 23 former members walk out the door, a first trip would land differently than another Power Four appearance would.
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The strangest sponsorship in bowl history
A quick detour, because it deserves one.
In 2014 the bitcoin payment company BitPay bought the naming rights and the game became the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. Bitcoin was accepted for tickets and concessions. BitPay paid ESPN for the sponsorship in bitcoin. One year later the company declined to renew and the game went back to being the St. Petersburg Bowl.
The rest of the name history is nearly as busy: magicJack, Beef O’Brady’s, BitPay, Bad Boy Mowers, and now Union Home Mortgage. Seven names in eighteen years.
The current identity is the one that stuck. The Gasparilla name arrived in 2017, borrowed from Tampa’s pirate festival and the legend of José Gaspar, and the bowl leaned all the way in. There is a Treasure Trophy, a block party downtown, krewes on decorated floats throwing beads outside the stadium, and a hashtag asking you to join the invasion.
From the Trop to Raymond James
The first ten editions were played at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, one of a small group of bowls staged in baseball parks. The field was laid down the right field line, running from near home plate to the outfield wall with barely enough room for the end zones.
The game moved to Raymond James Stadium in 2018 and has stayed there since. It is the third bowl in Tampa Bay history, after the Cigar Bowl from 1947 to 1954 and the ReliaQuest Bowl, which has been played in Tampa since 1986.
Back the players before Selection Day
The Gasparilla Bowl’s whole personality is that you cannot guess the field. Eight conferences feed it, the matchups rarely repeat, and a team that was not on anybody’s December radar in October ends up holding a pirate trophy.
That is a good argument for backing athletes on merit rather than on projected postseason slots.
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The 2026 Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl kicks off Friday, Dec. 18 at 2:30 p.m. ET on ESPN from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
