(It remains unclear why Excelsior Springs was singled out while the association continued to sanction other Thanksgiving football games in the state, such as Kirkwood vs. Webster Groves, still played to this day).

At the end of the 1952 season, an attempt to revive the bowl as a small-college contest failed after Northeast Missouri State (today Truman State), that year's co-champions of the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletics Association (today the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association), turned down an invitation to participate.

[4] After a gap of seventeen years, the bowl was revived as a National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) postseason game, held annually on the first Saturday in December starting in 1992.

Starting in 2000, representatives from the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) and Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) were chosen yearly for the game, with invitations going to the top-placing team in each conference not receiving a bid to the NCAA Division II National Football Championship playoffs.

Local organizers hoped to hold the Mineral Water Bowl in 2021,[7] but after failing to do so,[8] they finally gave up on continuing the game in 2022, citing a lack of sponsors.