The legacy of the 1968 Tangerine Bowl has its hands all over the 2024 Cure Bowl, as Ohio is set to take to the field in Orlando as MAC champions once again.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Like Ohio’s last MAC Championship team, the Bobcats received a trip to Orlando as the prize. The 1968 Bobcats played in the Tangerine Bowl, while this year’s team plays in the Cure Bowl. Such a series of coincidences makes it natural to compare Ohio’s last Orlando bowl game experience to the one they’re at now.
Before the Motor City Bowl, the Las Vegas Bowl, or even the California Raisin Bowl, the Tangerine Bowl was the prize MAC school eyed at the start of each season.
From 1968 to 1975, the MAC sent its champions to sunny Orlando, Florida to do carry the conference banner in the postseason. It was the first bowl regularly tied to the MAC champion, a predecessor to the Motor City, Las Vegas, and California Bowls.
Some of the MAC’s most storied teams played in the Tangerine Bowl these eight years, and the Ohio Bobcats were a prime example. Reaching their peak right before Toledo’s 34-game winning streak from 1969 to 1971, the Bobcats had one of the greatest seasons in the conference’s history.
Ohio went 10-0 and spent five weeks in the AP Poll, entering the Tangerine Bowl ranked #15. Cleve Bryant, a pioneering dual-threat quarterback, led the offense. Bryant threw for 1,524 yards and ran for 734 yards to lead a unit which averaged 37 points per game, a staggering total for the era. Receiver Todd Snyder had 777 yards and earned nods to the American Bowl and North-South Shrine Games at season’s end.
The 7-3 champions of the Southern Conference, the Richmond Spiders, awaited the Bobcats in Orlando. The Spiders seemed overmatched heading in, with three double-digit non-conference losses, including a 31-14 loss to MAC member Toledo in the season opener. Regional television exposure added to the fanfare, as 15 stations aired the Saturday night affair, mostly in Ohio and Virginia.
Ohio and Richmond went on to treat the assembled fans to one of the greatest Citrus Bowls ever. Cleve Bryant and Richmond quarterback Buster O’Brien dueled, with Bryant finishing 17-of-33 for 269 passing yards— with 11 of those passes going to Todd Snyder for 214 yards— but it was no match for O’Brien’s 447 yards on 39-of-59 attempts for the Spiders. His performance was all the more impressive considering his status was up in the air the week before the game, as the newly-minted lawyer had needed the NCAA’s assistance to play as a graduate student. O’Brien’s favorite target, Walter Gillette, set a bowl record of 20 catches— a number which still stands today. His 242 receiving yards also set a bowl record for the era, and still sits at ninth-highest in the modern era.
This Tangerine Bowl heartbreak was the peak of Ohio football for nearly four decades, as the Bobcats began their 37-year bowl drought the following season. Ohio would not make a postseason appearance again until the 2007 GMAC Bowl against Southern Miss.
The 1968 Tangerine Bowl represents the start and end of eras. Ohio’s christening of the MAC’s partnership with the bowl game began a stretch where the MAC competed with some of college football’s biggest names.
When the Southern Conference moved on, the spot became an at-large spot that the likes of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina filled. Ohio fans hope that an appearance in an Orlando bowl game will not initiate a dry spell but instead launch a renaissance for the program.
Like in 1968, the MAC champion carries the flag against another conference champion in one of college football’s most storied postseason venues. The hope moving forward is to not repeat the mistakes of yesteryear and create a new narrative after a bevy of changes on the coaching staff and roster over the past two seasons.
The Cure Bowl against the Jacksonville State Gamecocks is set to kick off from Orlando, Florida on Friday, Dec. 20, at noon Eastern time. The game will be broadcast by ESPN.