2009 Music City Bowl

2009 Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl
12th Music City Bowl
Stadium during the first quarter
Kentucky Wildcats Clemson Tigers (7–5) (8–5) SEC ACC 13 21 Head coach:  Rich Brooks Head coach:  Dabo Swinney
1 2 3 4 Total Kentucky 7 3 3 0 13 Clemson 7 7 0 7 21
Date	December 27, 2009
Season	2009
Stadium	LP Field
Location	Nashville, Tennessee
MVP	RB C. J. Spiller (Clemson)
Referee	Dennis Hennigan (Big East Conference)
Attendance	57,280
Payout	US$1,700,000 per team
United States TV coverage
Network	ESPN
Announcers	Sean McDonough, Matt Millen, Holly Rowe
Music City Bowl  < 2008  2010 >

The 2009 Music City Bowl was the twelfth edition of the college football bowl game, and was played at LP Field in Nashville, Tennessee. The game was played on Sunday, December 27, 2009, and was telecast on ESPN. The ACC's Clemson Tigers defeated the SEC's Kentucky Wildcats 21–13. Sponsored by Gaylord Hotels, it was officially named the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl.

Music City Bowl officials originally wanted to select North Carolina as the ACC representative.^[1] This would have set up a contest between two traditional college basketball powers (the Wildcats and Tar Heels are first and third, respectively, in all-time college basketball wins). This plan came undone, however, when the Chick-fil-A, Gator, and Champs Sports Bowls all passed on Clemson, which lost the 2009 ACC Championship Game to Georgia Tech. This forced the Music City Bowl to take Clemson. Under the ACC's bowl selection rules in 2009, the conference title game loser could not fall below the Music City Bowl, which had the fifth pick among bowl-eligible ACC teams. The Tar Heels accepted a bid to the 2009 Meineke Car Care Bowl.

Since 2002, the name of the bowl game has been known as The Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl, being named after its primary sponsor, Gaylord Hotels. The 2010 game marked the first time since then that a new company has taken over as title sponsor of the game, as Franklin American Mortgage will take over. Gaylord Hotels continued to be a major sponsor of the game.

This was Kentucky's third appearance in the bowl game in four years. It was Clemson's second appearance in the bowl. The game was a rematch of the 2006 game in which Kentucky won by a score of 28–20. The two teams had met a total of 12 previous times with Kentucky winning 8 of the previous games. Aside from the 2006 Music City Bowl, the schools also met in the 1993 Peach Bowl, a game won by Clemson 14–13.