After watching the Baltimore Ravens and the Houston Texans and that iconic Beyonce performance at half-time, I found out about another Christmas Day game called the Los Angeles Christmas Festival, which celebrated it’s 100th anniversary yesterday:
The Los Angeles Christmas Festival was a post-season college football bowl game played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California, on December 25, 1924, between the USC Trojans and the Missouri Tigers. It was the first and only Festival game ever played, in a time where bowl games were a fairly new concept. It was Missouri’s first bowl appearance and USC’s second, having last played in the 1923 Rose Bowl.
USC beat Missouri 20-7 and while it was the only “Los Angeles Christmas Festival”, the idea was revived in 2010 as the Christmas Bowl. Unfortunately it didn’t get past the idea stage due to licensing issues due to an inability to secure a back-up conference agreement
. After two more failed attempts, the game morphed into the Los Angeles Bowl in 2019 and the first one took place in 2021. Unlike the Christmas Festival, the Los Angeles Bowl is played the week before Christmas with Fresno State, UCLA, UNLV, and Utah State winning in each year.