Mineral Water Bowl

Roosevelt Field at Excelsior Springs High School which was home to the bowl until the school moved in 2003. The stadium is on the banks of the Fishing River near downtown Excelsior Springs blocks from the Hall of Waters Historic District and Elms Hotel

Tiger Stadium at the new Excelsior Springs High School on the edge of Excelsior Springs

From 1948 to 1951, the Mineral Water Bowl was a high school bowl game to showcase the Excelsior Springs High School team against another Missouri high school squad in the school's Thanksgiving contest. The Missouri High School Athletic Association never officially sanctioned the contest and forbade Excelsior Springs from playing in the game after 1950. (It remains unclear why Excelsior Springs was singled out while the association continued to sanction other Thanksgiving football games in the state, such as Kirkwood vs. Webster Groves, still played to this day). After the 1951 contest featuring two opponents from outside the area, the high school Mineral Water Bowl was no more.

In 1954, the bowl was revived as a small-college game. As of 1957, it was one of 11 NCAA sanctioned bowl games. The small-college contest continued annually until 1975, when declining interest led to the game being discontinued for a second time.

In 1992 the bowl was revived as a National Junior College Athletic Association postseason game, but after eight seasons, it became an NCAA bowl game once again, this time for teams from Division II.

From 2000 through 2017, representatives from the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) and Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) were chosen yearly for the game, with invitations going to the top-placing team in each conference not receiving a bid to the NCAA Division II National Football Championship playoffs. This arrangement was eventually strained when the MIAA began to send its top non-playoff teams to four other Division II bowl games: the now-defunct Kanza Bowl (from 2009 through 2012) and C.H.A.M.P.S. Heart of Texas Bowl (in 2016 and 2017), along with the Live United Texarkana Bowl (in 2014, 2015, and 2017) and Heritage Bowl (in 2017).

The 2018 game featured teams from the NSIC and the Great Lakes Valley Conference. The 2019 game once again included representatives from the NSIC and MIAA, the latter chosen as an at-large team.

Both the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Mineral Water Bowl were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This list is for appearances in the Mineral Water Bowl since the 2000 edition, when the bowl became a postseason NCAA Division II game.

• Official website