The Offense-Defense All-American Bowl is an annual high school football all-star game typically held in early January, created to spotlight the nation's top high-school seniors. The game was originally hosted in the U.S. state of Florida, but the 2009 edition was moved to the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina.
High school football is gridiron football played by high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both countries.
An all-star game is an exhibition game that purports to showcase the best players of a sports league. The exhibition is between two teams organized solely for the event, usually representing the league's teams based on region or division, but sometimes dividing the players by an attribute such as nationality. Selection of the players may be done by a vote of the coaches and/or news media; in professional leagues, fans may vote on some or all of the roster. An all-star game usually occurs at the midpoint of the regular season. An exception is American football's Pro Bowl, which occurs at the end of the season.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Most of the country is located contiguously in North America between Canada and Mexico.
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The inaugural game was played on January 4, 2007, at Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The next year the game moved to the Orange Bowl in Miami. [1] The demolition of the Orange Bowl started in March 2008 so the 2009 edition was moved to Brooks Stadium, the campus stadium of Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. [2]
Lockhart Stadium was a stadium used mostly for soccer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States. It was the home of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers of North American Soccer League. It has seen use in a variety of sports, particularly soccer and American football.
Fort Lauderdale is a city in the U.S. state of Florida, 28 miles (45 km) north of Miami. It is the county seat of Broward County. As of the 2018 census, the city has an estimated population of 182,595. Fort Lauderdale is a principal city of the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to an estimated 6,198,782 people in 2018.
The Miami Orange Bowl was an outdoor athletic stadium in the southeastern United States, located in Miami, Florida, west of downtown in Little Havana. Considered a landmark, it was the home stadium for the Miami Hurricanes college football team, and the professional Miami Dolphins for their first 21 seasons, until the opening of Joe Robbie Stadium in nearby Miami Gardens in 1987. The stadium was the temporary home of the FIU Golden Panthers while its FIU Stadium underwent expansion during the 2007 season.
The game is in an East versus West format, with each team made up of 40 of the best high school seniors from across the nation as determined by Rivals.com. A national player of the year award is also presented the night prior to the game. [3] The game was originally broadcast nationally to a prime-time audience thanks to broadcast partner ESPNU. The 2009 edition was increased to 88 total players, as selected from the Offense-Defense Top 100 list, a national recruit ranking system published by Sports Illustrated . Participants included 15 players ranked in the top-100 list.
Rivals.com is a network of websites that focus mainly on college football and basketball recruiting in the United States. The network was started in 1998 and currently employs more than 300 personnel.
ESPNU is an American digital cable and satellite sports television channel that is owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Communications. The channel is primarily dedicated to coverage of college athletics, and is also used as an additional outlet for general ESPN programming. ESPNU is based alongside its sister networks at ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut.
Sports Illustrated (SI) is an American sports magazine owned by Authentic Brands Group and published by Maven. First published in August 1954, it has over 3 million subscribers and is read by 23 million people each week, including over 18 million men.
The other big high school all-star games are the U.S. Army All-American Bowl played in San Antonio, Texas and the Under Armour All-America Game played in Orlando, Florida. Because all of these games host their events during the same week, they are in competition for players. A number of marquee players have participated in the O-D competition, including Cam Newton, Dez Bryant, Aaron Corp, Kodi Burns, Jarrett Lee, et al. [4]
The Under Armour High School All-America Game is a high school football all-star game typically held in early January in the U.S. state of Florida created to spotlight the nation’s top high school seniors. The game was first played on January 5, 2008, and has been played annually at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida or at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida. The game is sponsored by Under Armour and enjoys a national audience thanks to broadcast partner ESPN. The game is co-owned by Chicago-based sports marketing agency Intersport and ESPN.
Orlando is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Orange County. Located in Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released in July 2017. These figures make it the 23rd-largest metropolitan area in the United States, the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States, and the third-largest metropolitan area in Florida. As of 2015, Orlando had an estimated city-proper population of 280,257, making it the 73rd-largest city in the United States, the fourth-largest city in Florida, and the state's largest inland city.
Cameron Jerrell Newton is an American football quarterback for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Florida and Auburn. He was drafted as the first overall pick by the Panthers in the 2011 NFL Draft. Newton is the only player in the modern era to be awarded the Heisman Trophy, win a national championship, and become the first overall pick in an NFL draft within a one-year span. He was the 2011 NFL Rookie of the Year, is a three-time Pro Bowler, and was named the NFL MVP in 2015. In his rookie year, Newton broke all-time NFL rookie records for passing and rushing yards. He became the first NFL quarterback to throw for 400 yards in his first game, shattering Peyton Manning's first-game record by 120 yards. He also broke Otto Graham's 61-year-old record for passing yards by any quarterback in an NFL debut. Newton went on to become the first rookie quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards in a season. He also ran for 14 touchdowns, more in a single season than any quarterback in NFL history, breaking Steve Grogan's 35-year-old record.
