Crain's is reporting that the long-running day-after-Christmas Pizza Bowl has been cancelled. It seems to have been bumped out by a new bowl series backed by the Detroit Lions.
"The game, traditionally played the day after Christmas and aired live on ESPN, began as the Motor City Bowl in 1997 and moved to 64,500-seat Ford Field in 2002 from the 80,311-seat Pontiac Silverdome.
The fate of the Pizza Bowl has been in doubt since the Detroit Lions announced in 2013 that they’ll host a new bowl matching Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conference teams at Ford Field in a six-year deal that begins this year.
“If you look at any city right now, there are very, very few that can support two major bowl games,” Lions President Tom Lewand said in July 2013, adding that the Lions would be putting all of their support behind the yet-to-be-named Big Ten/ACC bowl.
The Lions-backed college game is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Dec. 26, according to the NCAA’s official 2014 bowl lineup. That had been the Pizza Bowl’s spot in the bowl schedule in the past.
Hoffman told Crain’s last year that he’d been in talks with Little Caesars’ co-founder Mike Ilitch to possibly relocate the Pizza Bowl across the street to 45,000-seat Comerica Park. That idea has not gone anywhere."
