| 2017 Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||
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| 10th Gasparilla Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | December 21, 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Season | 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Stadium | Tropicana Field | ||||||||||||||||||
| Location | St. Petersburg, Florida | ||||||||||||||||||
| MVP | Frank Nutile (QB, Temple) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | Tim O'Dey (MAC) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 16,363[1] | ||||||||||||||||||
| Payout | US$1,300,000[2] | ||||||||||||||||||
| United States TV coverage | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | ESPN RedVoice, LLC | ||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Mike Couzens, John Congemi, Kris Budden | ||||||||||||||||||
The 2017 Gasparilla Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 21, 2017, at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The tenth edition of the game previously known as the St. Petersburg Bowl, it featured the Temple Owls of the American Athletic Conference against the FIU Panthers of Conference USA. It began at 8:00 p.m. EST and aired on ESPN. It was one of the 2017–18 bowl games that concluded the 2017 FBS football season. The Owls defeated the Panthers by a score of 28–3.
This was the first edition of the bowl to use the Gasparilla naming, a nod to the legend of José Gaspar, a mythical pirate who is the inspiration for Tampa's Gasparilla Pirate Festival. Sponsored by lawnmower manufacturing company Bad Boy Mowers, the game was officially known as the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl.[3] This was the last edition of the bowl played at Tropicana Field.