The Armed Forces Bowl is a postseason college football bowl game played at the on-campus stadium of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, since 2003. Teams from various collegiate football conferences are eligible for the bowl.
What is Armed Forces Bowl?
Armed Forces Bowl is the annual football bowl game, founded for college football teams in 2003. The Bowl was established under the name Fort Worth Bowl, which changed to the current in 2005. The games of the bowl are played on the Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas.
The very first badge of the bowl was designed right after its establishment as the Fort Worth Bowl. It was a horizontally located solid black rectangular banner, overlapped by a red five-pointed star in a triple white, gray and black outline. On the banner, there was a four-level inscription, with the sponsor’s “Plains Capital” logotype in white on top, and the “Fort Worth Bowl” in the uppercase of a geometric sans-serif typeface, written in red with a white outline. As for the star, it had a stylized white, gray and black image of the bill’s head on it.
The redesign of 2005 shortened the inscription on the black part of the Bowl’s logo, removing the sponsor’s logotype from it. So the rectangle became thinner, which made the red star look larger, and attract all the attention.
The logo of the Armed Forces Bowl was redesigned in 2012, and the main change of the year was the new color palette. The crest was now executed in a sleep gradient black and purple combination, with the white lettering, and the American flag now set inside the letter “X” on the bottom part of the shield. The bottom part of the crest had a matte texture with small solid dots all over, while the upper one, with the sponsor’s logo was gradient black, with a little gloss.
The Armed Forces Bowl logo from 2013 kept all the element of the previous version apart from one: the bottom part of the crest, under the arched banner with the lettering, was now set in the National US flag color palette, with the upper part in smooth blue, and the bottom — in the vertically striped white and red pattern. There were also five white stars set along the separating line of the flag.
The redesign of 2014 introduced a new color palette of the Armed Forces Bowl visual identity. Now it was executed in blue, with a bold black and white frame, a black and white ribbon with the wordmark, and a black stylized rugby ball placed vertically on the bottom part of the crest. On the sides from the ball there were wide red and white stripes, a patriotic addition, standing for the national flag of the USA.
The only change made to the Armed Forces Bowl logo in 1017 was the “XV” written in the same typeface as the main wordmark, on a black vertically set rugby ball in the bottom of the crest. Everything else remained untouched, including the bold white “Lockheed Martin” logotype followed by the stylized star on the top blue segment of the badge.
The “XV” was removed in 2018, and the color palette was smoothened. The bright blue shade of the crest’s background became calmer and softer, but it did not affect the solidness and brightness of the crest, on the contrary, it made the whole logo look more professional and confident.
The redesign of the Armed Forces Bowl logo, held in 2022, has brought two new elements to the badge: the white stylized “XX” to the black football at the bottom of the crest, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the bowl, and the massive black “Bowl For The Brave” tagline, set under the shield in a bold geometric sans-serif typeface.