Little Caesars Pizza Bowl extends with MAC, Big Ten for four more years

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Postseason college football in Detroit will continue for another four years.

The Little Caesars Pizza Bowl extended its contract Monday with the Big Ten and Mid-American conferences, pitting eligible teams from both conferences in the game through 2013.

“That’s the game we’ve always felt was the right game to have in Detroit,” said Ken Hoffman, chairman and executive director of the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. “We’ve got four more opportunities coming up the next four years. The Big Ten is confident that it’s going to have more bowl eligible teams annually, so we hope that we’ll have a better opportunity for Big Ten teams here over the next four years.”

The No. 1 or No. 2 MAC team will play the No. 8 eligible Big Ten team in December at Ford Field. Bowl officials will have first pick of a MAC team in 2010 and 2012, getting the second eligible team in 2011 and 2013.

Should an eighth Big Ten team not qualify for bowl berths, a team from the Sun Belt Conference will be selected.

“If there’s a conference that wants to sign additional (bowl) contracts, they can do so, but we have to have a backup contract,” Hoffman said. “Having Sun Belt allows us to do that and provides us another quality conference that has been in this game two of the last four years in the event that a Big Ten cannot provide a team.”

The fate of the bowl, formerly referred to as the Motor City Bowl, came into question following the 2008 game when General Motors Corp. and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection and pulled out of sponsoring the game. Little Caesars Pizza stepped in late and became the title sponsor, keeping the bowl alive.

CMU has made three Little Caesars Pizza Bowl appearances, including a 31-14 win against Middle Tennessee State in 2006.

Marshall defeated Ohio 21-17 in 2009.

The MAC retains ties with the GMAC Bowl in Mobile, Ala., and recently signed a contract to send its third bowl-eligible team to the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho.

The International Bowl, the previous destination of the No. 3 MAC team, closed its doors in March.