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The Hula Bowl is an independently administered post-season invitational college football game held each year in Hawaii. Established in 1946 by broadcaster Mackay Yanagisawa as the Hula Bowl All-Star Football Classic, the game has been historically played at the Honolulu Stadium and the Aloha Stadium, both in the city of Honolulu. In 1998, Maui County Mayor Linda Lingle convinced organizers to move the game to the War Memorial Stadium in the town of Kahului. The Hula Bowl is considered a premier venue to launch professional careers in the National Football League. Today the Hula Bowl is a trademarked institution of the American Football Coaches Association and the Downtown Athletic Club of Heisman Trophy fame.
In its current format it pits an all-star team of players who attended college in the Eastern United States against a team of players from the Western United States. (In the past a North vs. South format has been used.) For many years it was distinguished from a similar event, the Senior Bowl, by playing by collegiate rather than professional rules and by being amateur, which at one point was very important for those wishing to remain eligible to compete in collegiate or other amateur sports in the future, but is less relevant today. The game, and especially the practice sessions leading up to it, are attended by many professional scouts, and can have an important bearing on where a player, particularly one from a lesser-known school, is drafted by the NFL or even whether or not he is selected at all.
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