The Mineral Water Bowl was an annual American NCAA Division II college football bowl game held in Excelsior Springs, Missouri at Tiger Stadium. Throughout its long history (1948 to 2019), the game was sponsored by the Quarterback Club, a civic organization in Excelsior Springs. At the time of its demise, it was one of four Division II sanctioned bowl games, along with the Live United Texarkana Bowl, the Heritage Bowl, and the America's Crossroads Bowl.
The first Mineral Water Bowl was played on Thanksgiving Day in 1948.[1] The game was established to showcase the Excelsior Springs High School team against another Missouri high school squad, but the Missouri High School Athletic Association never officially sanctioned it and forbade Excelsior Springs from playing in the game after 1950. (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). After the 1951 contest, which featured two opponents from outside the area, the high school Mineral Water Bowl was discontinued.
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.[2] Undeterred by this setback, local organizers succeeded in bringing back the game as a small-college bowl two years later, in 1954.[3] The game was eventually moved from Thanksgiving Day to the Saturday before or after the holiday. As of 1957, it was one of 11 sanctioned NCAA bowl games. The bowl continued in the small-college format, hosting teams from as far away as Michigan and Colorado, but the pool of potential quality opponents dwindled after the onset of football playoffs for NCAA Division II and Division III, in 1973. Despite featuring a Missouri school in 11 of 22 contests, the bowl suffered from declining interest and was discontinued for a second time after the 1975 game. Crowds had dwindled from a peak of 7,000 in the 1960s to just 1,500 in 1974.[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.[5] In the 1996 contest, Blinn (TX) defeated Coffeyville (KS) for the NJCAA championship. The junior college bowl typically featured top-ranked teams, and the Kansas community college league--closest to the game site geographically--provided teams for six of the games, but after eight years the sponsors opted to make it an NCAA bowl once again, this time for teams from Division II.
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.[6] The arrangement between the MIAA and NSIC continued until 2017 but was eventually strained when the MIAA began to send its top non-playoff teams to four other Division II bowl games: the now-defunct Kanza Bowl (from 2009 through 2012), C.H.A.M.P.S. Heart of Texas Bowl (in 2016 and 2017), and Live United Texarkana Bowl (in 2014, 2015, and 2017), along with the Heritage Bowl (in 2017). After 2017, the NSIC had the only automatic bid to the game, with its representative facing an at-large opponent. The 2018 game featured teams from the NSIC and the Great Lakes Valley Conference. The 2019 game once again included representatives from the NSIC and MIAA, the latter chosen as an at-large team.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of all Division II postseason football games in 2020. 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.[9]
| Date played | Winning team | Losing team | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 25, 1948 | Excelsior Springs (MO) | 48 | Mexico (MO) | 18 | |
| November 24, 1949 | Excelsior Springs | 12 | North Kansas City (MO) | 6 | |
| November 23, 1950 | Raytown (MO) | 7 | Excelsior Springs | 0 | |
| November 22, 1951 | Harrisonville (MO) | 14 | Higginsville (MO) | 13 | |
| Date played | Winning team | Losing team | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 25, 1954 | Hastings | 20 | 14 | ||
| November 24, 1955 | Missouri Valley | 31 | 7 | ||
| November 22, 1956 | 14 | 13 | |||
| November 30, 1957 | 33 | 14 | |||
| November 22, 1958 | 21 | 0 | |||
| November 28, 1959 | 21 | 20 | |||
| November 26, 1960 | 17 | 6 | |||
| November 25, 1961 | Northeast Missouri State | 22 | 8 | ||
| November 24, 1962 | Adams State | 23 | 20 | ||
| November 30, 1963 | Northern Illinois | 21 | 14 | ||
| November 28, 1964 | North Dakota State | 14 | 13 | ||
| November 27, 1965 | North Dakota | 37 | 20 | ||
| November 26, 1966 | 14 | 8 | |||
| November 25, 1967 | 14 | 14 | |||
| November 30, 1968 | Doane | 10 | 0 | ||
| November 29, 1969 | 21 | 0 | |||
| November 28, 1970 | 40 | 12 | |||
| December 4, 1971 | 17 | 14 | |||
| November 18, 1972 | 27 | 20 | |||
| November 17, 1973 | 20 | 9 | |||
| November 23, 1974 | Midland | 32 | 6 | ||
| November 22, 1975 | 44 | 0 | |||
| Date played | Winning team | Losing team | References | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 5, 1992 | 12 | 10 | [10] | |||
| December 4, 1993 | 52 | 50 | [11] | |||
| December 3, 1994 | 19 | 17 | ||||
| December 2, 1995 | 42 | 37 | ||||
| December 7, 1996 | Blinn | 43 | 14 | [12] | ||
| December 6, 1997 | 26 | 22 | [13] | |||
| December 5, 1998 | 41 | 3 | ||||
| December 4, 1999 | 29 | 20 | [14] | |||
| Date played | Winning team | Losing team | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 2, 2000 | Winona State (NSIC) | 43 | Missouri Western (MIAA) | 41 | 3 OT | |
| December 1, 2001 | Central Missouri (MIAA) | 48 | Minnesota–Duluth (NSIC) | 17 | ||
| December 7, 2002 | Emporia State (MIAA) | 34 | Winona State (NSIC) | 27 | OT | |
| December 6, 2003 | Missouri Western (MIAA) | 24 | Concordia (MN) (NSIC) | 14 | ||
| December 4, 2004 | Washburn (MIAA) | 36 | Northern State (NSIC) | 33 | ||
| December 3, 2005 | Missouri Western (MIAA) | 35 | Concordia (MN) (NSIC) | 23 | ||
| December 2, 2006 | Pittsburg State (MIAA) | 35 | Bemidji State (NSIC) | 27 | ||
| December 1, 2007 | Missouri Western (MIAA) | 20 | Wayne State (NE) (NSIC) | 13 | ||
| December 6, 2008 | Augustana (SD) (NSIC) | 37 | Missouri Western (MIAA) | 16 | ||
| December 5, 2009 | Missouri Western (MIAA) | 34 | Augustana (SD) (NSIC) | 21 | ||
| December 4, 2010 | Pittsburg State (MIAA) | 13 | Concordia (MN) (NSIC) | 9 | ||
| December 3, 2011 | Minnesota State (NSIC) | 28 | Northeastern State (Ind.)+ | 14 | ||
| December 1, 2012 | Winona State (NSIC) | 41 | Lindenwood (MIAA) | 21 | ||
| December 7, 2013 | Pittsburg State (MIAA) | 90 | Southwest Minnesota State (NSIC) | 28 | ||
| December 6, 2014 | Sioux Falls (NSIC) | 42 | Central Oklahoma (MIAA) | 10 | ||
| December 5, 2015 | Minnesota–Duluth (NSIC) | 30 | Fort Hays State (MIAA) | 22 | ||
| December 3, 2016 | Bemidji State (NSIC) | 36 | Washburn (MIAA) | 23 | ||
| December 2, 2017 | Central Missouri (MIAA) | 38 | Minnesota–Duluth (NSIC) | 28 | ||
| December 1, 2018 | Missouri S&T (GLVC) | 51 | Minnesota State–Moorhead (NSIC) | 16 | ||
| December 7, 2019 | Nebraska-Kearney (MIAA) | 50 | Winona State (NSIC) | 33 | ||
This list is for appearances in the Mineral Water Bowl during its years as a postseason NCAA Division II game (2000 through 2019).
| Rank | Team | Appearances | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 | 4–2 | ||
| 2 | 4 | 2–2 | ||
| 3 | 3 | 0–3 | ||
| 3 | 3 | 1–2 | ||
| 3 | 3 | 3–0 | ||
| T5 | 2 | 1–1 | ||
| T5 | 2 | 1–1 | ||
| T5 | 2 | 2–0 | ||
| T5 | 2 | 1–1 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 0–1 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 1–0 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 0–1 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 0–1 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 1–0 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 0–1 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 1–0 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 1–0 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 0–1 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 0–1 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 1–0 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 0–1 | ||
| T9 | 1 | 0–1 |