Michigan’s Long Running College Bowl Game Has Very Quietly Made a Major Change

Michigan's college teams are well known for playing in bowl games. However, the state is rarely thought of as a host for college football post season play.

Most recently the Quick Lane Bowl has been held at Ford Field annually. It turns out the 2023 Quick Lane Bowl will be the last in that game's history as the organizers have made a quiet but important change to the game.

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The bowl has been rechristened with a new name and sponsor.

Out is the Ford Motor Company and its Quick Lane branded oil change facilities. In is something called GameAbove Sports. So welcome the GameAbove Sports Bowl to Ford Field.

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The Quick Lane sponsorship ended in June and it was in October that GameAbove jumped on board. The rebranding does, however, keep the Michigan-based nature to the game. GameAbove is described as a capital investment firm with interests in sports and entertainment. The company is founded by an alumni of Eastern Michigan University and is active in the Ypsilanti area.

The Detroit-based bowl game will continue to see a paring of a Big 10 school and MAC school.

The change is one of about a dozen changes to college bowl games this season when adding in new names, sponsors or rebranded logos.

The GameAbove Sports, nee Quick Lane, Bowl dates back to 2014 when the game was developed to replace the Little Caesars Bowl which had been held first at the Silverdome starting in 1997 then at Ford Field from 2002-2013. That game was the Motor City Bowl for the first 21 years of its existence.

The rebranded GameAbove Sports bowl will continue the tradition of college football postgame play that traces its lineage back to the Cherry Bowl, a bowl series played just twice in the mid-1980s at the Pontiac Silverdome. The 1984 game saw Army defeat Michigan State 10-6 while the 1985 match up was between Maryland and Syracuse.