The Boardwalk Bowl was a postseason college football game held indoors at the former Atlantic City Convention Hall (now Boardwalk Hall) in Atlantic City, New Jersey, from 1961 to 1973.
History Convention Hall was built in the late 1920s and hosted indoor college football games as early as 1930, but the venue did not have a perennial football event until the Boardwalk Bowl. While earlier contests had been played on dirt, the playing surface for the bowl games consisted of natural grass sod that was grown outside and then moved indoors for the game. From 1961 through 1967, the bowl matched Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener University) against the United States Merchant Marine Academy in what was known as the "Little Army–Navy Game." Merchant Marine won six of the seven games in the series.
In 1968, the Boardwalk Bowl succeeded the Tangerine Bowl as one of the four regional finals in the College Division (which became Division II and Division III in 1973). The other three regionals were the Pecan (later Pioneer), Grantland Rice, and Camellia bowls. During these years, the bowl sought to match the two best non-major teams in a 17-state Eastern Region stretching from New England to Florida. Delaware secured a bid to the game in four consecutive years (1968 through 1971) and won all four games.
In 1973, under the new Division II playoff system, the Boardwalk Bowl became a national quarterfinal, while the other three quarterfinals were nameless and played at campus sites. The semifinals were the Pioneer and Grantland Rice bowls, and the Camellia was the championship game. Grambling defeated Delaware in the only Boardwalk Bowl played under this format. The game was discontinued after 1973, when the NCAA made all of its quarterfinals unnamed games at campus venues; after 1977 the semifinals likewise were unnamed (though the D-II championship game remained a "bowl" through 1985).
The Boardwalk Bowl shared Convention Hall with the Liberty Bowl in 1964, a transition year between that bowl game's original home in Philadelphia and eventual site in Memphis. From 1970 through 1972, the Knute Rockne Bowl, which matched top programs from among the smallest eastern NCAA College Division schools, was also played in Convention Hall. In those three seasons, the two bowls were played two weeks apart.
Game results Date Winner Loser Game December 2, 1961 35 Merchant Marine 14 Little Army–Navy Game December 1, 1962 9 0 November 30, 1963 27 13 November 28, 1964 20 16 November 27, 1965 22 12 November 26, 1966 46 7 November 25, 1967 39 6 December 14, 1968 Delaware 31 24 NCAA College DivisionRegional Final December 13, 1969 Delaware 31 13 December 12, 1970 Delaware 38 23 December 11, 1971 Delaware 72 22 December 9, 1972 UMass 35 UC Davis 14 December 1, 1973 Grambling 17 Delaware 8 NCAA Division II Quarterfinal
See also List of college bowl games
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