International Bowl

The first game was played on January 6, 2007 at the Rogers Centre, home to the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts and multiple Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Vanier Cups (1989–2003, 2007). In 2004, a partnership led by the City of Toronto bid to host a bowl game in Toronto to help the city recover from its loss of tourism dollars due to the 2003 SARS outbreak[citation needed], but the NCAA sanctioned the new Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego, California instead. Toronto re-launched the bid in 2005 and was successful, playing the first game at the end of 2006 season.

The bowl signed an agreement with two Division I conferences for annual representation. The Big East Conference, a Bowl Championship Series conference, will send a fourth placed team or higher to the game, and the Mid-American Conference will also select a top team for inclusion in the event. Each conference is composed of schools in the northern states of the American Midwest and Northeast, except for the University of South Florida.

The inaugural game was the first post-season bowl game played outside the United States since the Bacardi Bowl was played in Cuba on January 1, 1937, and the first football game of significance to be played in Canada under American football rules since Simon Fraser University's football team left the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics in 2001, and joined CIS, where Canadian universities play under Canadian football rules.