1996 Outback Bowl
NCAA football bowl game
The 1996 Outback Bowl featured the Auburn Tigers and the Penn State Nittany Lions. This was the tenth edition of the game previously known as the Hall of Fame Bowl, and the first one to use the Outback Bowl name, with sponsorship from Outback Steakhouse. Penn State turned a close first half into a blowout, with a big third-quarter run, and ended up winning by a score of 43-14. Penn State's total of 43 points would stand as an Outback Bowl record for 20 years, until it was surpassed by Tennessee in the 2016 Outback Bowl.
Summary
The first quarter was dominated by defense, as the only points came on a 19-yard field goal from Penn State placekicker Brett Conway. With that chip shot, Penn State opened up a 3–0 lead. With 12:39 left in the second quarter, Auburn posted the first touchdown of the game, with a 25-yard pass from quarterback Patrick Nix to Robert Baker. Auburn claimed a 7–3 lead after the successful extra point.
Auburn's defense continued its stellar play, giving up field goals of 22 and 38 yards to fall behind, 9–7. Then with just 5 seconds in the half, Penn State quarterback Wally Richardson threw an 8-yard touchdown pass to Mike Archie, to make it a 16–7 halftime lead.
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This entry incorporates text from “1996 Outback Bowl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.