The Capital One Bowl is an annual college football bowl game played in Orlando, Florida at the Citrus Bowl. It has been previously known as both the Tangerine Bowl (1947-1982) and the Florida Citrus Bowl (1983-2002). Capital One, a financial services company is has sponsored the bowl since 2001. The bowl is operated by Florida Citrus Sports, a non-profit group which also organizes the Champs Sports Bowl and Florida Classic. It traditionally is played on New Years Day directly before the Rose Bowl.

What is now known as the Capital One Bowl game is one of the oldest of the non-BCS bowls, next to the Gator Bowl, Cotton Bowl Classic and Sun Bowl, all which began in 1947. The first game was played before an estimated crowd of 9,000.

The 2010 Capital One Bowl took place on New Year's Day, January 1, 2010, at 1:00 p.m. EST in Orlando Florida. Penn State was favored to win and they did win. The Penn State Nittany Lions of the Big Ten Conference defeated the LSU Tigers of the Southeastern Conference 19-17.http://scores.espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=300010099

Penn State continued their historic success under head coach Joe Paterno with a 10-2 record. Both losses came against conference teams, falling to the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Ohio State Buckeyes to finish third in the Big Ten.http://espn.go.com/ncf/clubhouse?teamId=213

The LSU Tigers opened the 2009 season with five-consecutive wins, including over the Georgia Bulldogs. They fell to the Florida Gators and Alabama Crimson Tide, then defeated in-state rival Louisiana Tech. The Tigers went on to drop a game to Ole Miss on November 21, 2009, to finish second in the SEC West Division, just behind Alabama.http://espn.go.com/ncf/clubhouse?teamId=99

Each year, Capital One sponsors the "Mascot of the Year" contest. The public is invited to vote for their favorite college mascot. The way it works is several mascots from various Division I FBS/FCS schools are nominated to "play" a simulated 10-week season. The mascot with the best record is then declared the winner and is honored at halftime on the game telecast on ABC.

The winning school is awarded $10,000 towards their mascot program.

Past winners:

• 2002 Monte the Grizzly from Montana
• 2003 Cocky from South Carolina
• 2004 Monte the Grizzly from Montana
• 2005 Herbie Husker from Nebraska
• 2006 Butch T. Cougar from Washington State
• 2007 Zippy the Kangaroo from Akron
• 2008 Cy the Cardinal from Iowa State
• 2009 Bearcat from Cincinnati

e Bearcat from Cincinnati