A pair of 7-5 teams from the Sun Belt and MAC are set to square off at South Alabama’s Hancock Whitney Stadium in Mobile, Alabama, on Dec. 26 as Arkansas State meets Bowling Green in the 2024 68 Ventures Bowl.
The game has existed since 1999 and gone by quite a few names, most recently the LendingTree Bowl, and this year’s iteration pits two teams that finished with winning records in conference play against each other.
Former Tennessee coach Butch Jones leads the Red Wolves in his fourth season, and they finished third in the Sun Belt West but suffered blowout losses to Louisiana and Texas State, which finished ahead of them.
The Falcons, led by sixth-year coach Scot Loeffler, finished tied for third in the MAC as they were predicted before the season. After a 2-4 start, Bowling Green strung five wins together in a row, a streak that ended in the final week of the regular season against Miami (Ohio).
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A victory in the 68 Ventures Bowl would give Bowling Green its first bowl win since 2014 and the first under Loeffler. It would also mark his first eight-win season and the Falcons’ first since 2015. Jones is also looking for his first eight-win season at Arkansas State, a program that boasts four bowl wins since moving up to FBS in 1992 but none since 2019, before Jones took over.
We’ll see which coach can reach eight wins for the first time at their respective programs when Arkansas State and Bowling Green head to Mobile on Boxing Day.
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Rex Nelson has been senior editor and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since 2017, and he has a biweekly podcast called “Southern Fried.”
After graduating from Ouachita Baptist University in 1981, he was a sportswriter for the Arkansas Democrat for a year before becoming editor of Arkadelphia’s Daily Siftings Herald. He was the youngest editor of a daily in Arkansas at age 23. Rex was then news and sports director at KVRC-KDEL from 1983-1985.
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He returned to the Democrat as assistant sports editor in 1985. From 1986-1989, he was its Washington correspondent. He left to be Jackson T. Stephens’ consultant.
Rex became the Democrat-Gazette’s first political editor in 1992, but left in 1996 to join then-Gov. Mike Huckabee’s office. He also served from 2005-09 in the administration of President George W. Bush.
From 2009-2018, he worked stints at the Communications Group, Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities, and Simmons First National Corp.
Dylan Sherman is a business reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He is based in Northwest Arkansas and focuses on Tyson Foods Inc. and the transportation industry. A graduate of the University of Missouri, he has been with the newspaper since 2023.
