Little Caesars Pizza Bowl
Year MVP ( s ) Team Position
1997 Stewart Patridge Mississippi QB
1998 Chad Pennington Marshall QB
1999 Doug Chapman Marshall RB
2000 Byron Leftwich Marshall QB
2001 Chester Taylor Toledo RB
2002 Brian St. Pierre Boston College QB
2003 Josh Harris Bowling Green QB
2003 Jason Wright Northwestern RB
2004 Dan Orlovsky Connecticut QB
2005 DeAngelo Williams Memphis RB
2006 Dan LeFevour Central Michigan QB
2007 Curtis Painter Purdue QB
2008 Rusty Smith Florida Atlantic QB
2009 Martin Ward Marshall RB
2010 T. Y. Hilton FIU WR
2011 Akeem Shavers Purdue RB
2012 Ryan Radcliff Central Michigan QB
2013 James Conner Pittsburgh RB
MVPs
The Little Caesars Pizza Bowl (known as the Motor City Bowl until 2009) was a post-season college football bowl game that was played annually from 1997 to 2013. The first five games (1997-2001) were played at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, and moved to the 65,000-seat Ford Field in downtown Detroit, Michigan in 2002 - the past and present homes of the Detroit Lions respectively. The game marked the first bowl game held in the Detroit area since the Cherry Bowl in 1984-85. The Little Caesars Pizza Bowl featured a bowl-eligible team from the Mid-American Conference (usually the winner of the MAC Championship Game, although that team was not required to accept the bid; prior to the formation of the bowl the MAC champion earned an automatic bid to the Las Vegas Bowl) playing a bowl-eligible team from the Big Ten Conference. If the Big Ten did not have an eligible team, the game featured a team from the Sun Belt Conference that met the NCAA requirement of at least six wins. In the event that the Sun Belt did not have an available team, an at-large team could be chosen. The final Little Caesars Pizza Bowl was held in 2013; it was displaced by the Quick Lane Bowl, which is organized by the Detroit Lions and features Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conference opponents. Organizers explored the possibility of moving the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl to nearby Comerica Park as an outdoor game, but the game would instead be cancelled indefinitely.