2010 Sugar Bowl
The 2010 Allstate Sugar Bowl was an American college football bowl game that was part of the Bowl Championship Series for the 2009 NCAA Division I FBS football season and was the 76th Sugar Bowl. The [2009 Florida 1984 Florida Gators football team|Gators football team|Florida Gators] defeated the [2009 Cincinnati List of Cincinnati Bearcats football seasons|Bearcats football team|Cincinnati Bearcats] 51–24 behind a record-setting performance by senior quarterback Tim Tebow.
Background
The contest was played on Friday, January 1, 2010, in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana between the Florida Gators, who had been undefeated on the season until losing to #2 Alabama in the SEC Championship Game and the Cincinnati Bearcats, winners of the Big East Conference. The Bearcats were coached by Offensive coordinator Jeff Quinn on an interim basis after Head Coach Brian Kelly left Cincinnati to take the head coaching position at Notre Dame on December 10, 2009. This would be Quinn's only game as head coach for Cincinnati, as he had already accepted the head coaching position of the University of Buffalo's football team effective after the Sugar Bowl.This was Florida's eighth trip to the Sugar Bowl, having gone 2–5 in their previous seven appearances, the last being a 37–20 loss to Miami in 2001. For Cincinnati, this was their first appearance in the Sugar Bowl and their second in a BCS bowl game. The teams had met only once before - in 1984, when the Gators defeated the Bearcats 48–17 at Florida Field. Florida's head coach Urban Meyer played college football at Cincinnati and was a member of that 1984 Cincinnati team.