Previous sponsors include St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (1993–1996) and AXA Financial (1997–2003).

A. F. "Bud" Dudley, a former Villanova athletic director, created the Liberty Bowl in Philadelphia in 1959.

The first game was the most successful of the five held in Philadelphia, as 38,000 fans watched Penn State beat Alabama, 7–0, in the bowl's inaugural edition.

Dudley was paid $25,000 from Atlantic City businessmen, $60,000 from the gate, and $95,000 from television revenues, and cleared $10,000 net profit.

[6] Having been played every college football season since 1959, the game has established itself as one of the oldest non-New Year's Six bowls.

Beginning in 1996, the Liberty Bowl began an affiliation with the newly launched Conference USA (C-USA), offering its champion an automatic bid.

The bowl's contract from 2006 until 2013 pitted the winner of the C-USA championship game against the eighth pick from the SEC.

The SEC was also given veto power for the bowl, and elected to use it in 2011 to block C-USA champion Southern Miss from playing Vanderbilt; instead, Cincinnati got the spot and Southern Miss accepted an invitation to the 2011 Hawaii Bowl instead.

The 2011 game matched Coaches' Poll 24th-ranked Cincinnati against upstart Vanderbilt, and unlike most lower tier bowls, it aired on the broadcast network ABC rather than its cable brethren ESPN.

The 2012 Liberty Bowl featured an unusual rematch of a regular season game between the Iowa State Cyclones (9th place in the Big 12) and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane (C-USA champions).

[12] Army, who had accepted an invitation to the Independence Bowl before it was cancelled due to a lack of available teams, was named as their replacement.

Source:[16]: 70 [17] † indicates the MVP played on the losing team Updated through the December 2024 edition (66 games, 132 total appearances).

Every current, former or future Big 12 member except Oklahoma and Texas have played in the game.