2023 Famous Toastery Bowl
The 2023 Famous Toastery Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 18, 2023, at Jerry Richardson Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. Originally planned as the 9th annual Bahamas Bowl, it was renamed and relocated due to renovations at its usual site, Thomas Robinson Stadium in the Bahamas. The game featured the Old Dominion Monarchs from the Sun Belt Conference and the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers from Conference USA. It started at approximately 2:30 p.m EST and was broadcast on ESPN. The Famous Toastery Bowl was one of the 2023–24 bowl games concluding the 2023 FBS football season.
Relocation
The bowl was originally scheduled, as the Bahamas Bowl, to be played on December 16, 2023, with a start time of 11:00 a.m. EST. However, on October 26, it was announced that the game would be held at Jerry Richardson Stadium in North Carolina due to renovations at Thomas Robinson Stadium in the Bahamas. The game also swapped dates and start times with the 2023 Myrtle Beach Bowl. The game was originally sponsored by mortgage lender HomeTown Lenders, and was, before relocation, to be officially known as the HomeTown Lenders Bahamas Bowl. On November 14, 2023, the Famous Toastery restaurant chain was named the title sponsor of the relocated bowl. The game is expected to return to the Bahamas in 2024.Teams
The game originally planned to feature teams from the Sun Belt Conference and Mid-American Conference. While the Old Dominion Monarchs from Sun Belt were named as a participant, the MAC did not have enough bowl-eligible teams to fill their spot. The Western Kentucky Hilltoppers of Conference USA were then selected.This was the eighth meeting between Old Dominion and Western Kentucky; entering the bowl, the Hilltoppers led the all-time series 6–1, with the Monarchs' lone win coming in 2018. From 2014 to 2021, Old Dominion and Western Kentucky played together in C-USA, parting ways when the Monarchs joined the Sun Belt for 2022.