Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

The Humanitarian Bowl was launched, in part, as a response to changes made to the Las Vegas Bowl’s selection process.[2] When the bowl was launched in 1992 as the successor to the California Bowl, it inherited the bowl’s contracted matchup of the champions of the Big West Conference and the Mid-American Conference (MAC) that had been taking place since 1982. However, after the 1996 edition, the Las Vegas Bowl dropped its affiliations with the Big West and the MAC in favor of offering a bid to a team from the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), forcing the conferences to find other solutions. This resulted in two new bowl games being launched for the 1997 season, one of which was awarded to Boise and initially named the Humanitarian Bowl. The Big West, which had Boise State as a member at the time, agreed to terms to send its champion to the bowl. The MAC, meanwhile, sent its champion to the Motor City Bowl in Detroit.

From 1997 to 1999, the Big West champion was matched with a team from Conference USA (C-USA), while in 2000 the WAC sent a representative. The Big West stopped sponsoring football after the 2000 season, and bowl organizers extended a permanent invite to the WAC to replace the Big West as host of the game, and struck an agreement with the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) to provide a bowl-eligible team if it had yet to fill its bowl allotment. The WAC champion received the automatic bid to the game unless that team received a better offer from another bowl game or qualified for the Bowl Championship Series (BCS).

The WAC and ACC met in the 2001 through 2008 editions of the bowl, except for 2002 when the ACC's slot was filled by Iowa State of the Big 12 Conference. In 2009, the Mountain West Conference was to provide a team, but Mountain West champion TCU was selected for the Fiesta Bowl and the conference did not have enough bowl-eligible teams to send a replacement; as a result, Bowling Green of the MAC was invited. In 2010, the bowl inherited the MAC's International Bowl tie-in after that Toronto-based bowl folded; the bowl featured a MAC vs. WAC matchup through 2012.

After the WAC stopped sponsoring football in 2012, Mountain West inherited its spot as host, reaching agreement with the bowl to provide a team, starting with the December 2013 edition.[3] The bowl featured MAC vs. Mountain West matchups in the 2013 through 2015 games. In 2016, the bowl invited in-state Idaho of the Sun Belt Conference in place of a MAC team. The 2017 edition returned to MAC vs. Mountain West, while in the 2018 edition, independent BYU was invited in place of a Mountain West team. In late July 2019, it was announced that the Mountain West and MAC would maintain their tie-ins to the bowl through the 2025–26 football season. The December 2020 edition included the first invitation to a team from the American Athletic Conference (AAC or "The American").

The game originally named for the Idaho-based World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.[4] It was sponsored by Micron Technology, an Idaho-based manufacturer, from 1999 to 2002 under the name Crucial.com, which sold computer memory upgrades from Micron. The bowl game then briefly had no sponsor for the January 2004 game. In December 2004, the name was changed to the MPC Computers Bowl. MPC Computers, which is also based in Idaho, was formerly MicronPC, the computer manufacturing division of Micron, but was later split off as a separate company. In April 2007, it was announced that the bowl would again be called the Humanitarian Bowl.[5] In May 2007, Boise-based Roady's Truck Stops was announced as the new sponsor, thus renaming the game the Roady's Humanitarian Bowl.[6] On May 25, 2010, uDrove, a maker of applications for the transportation industry, became the sponsor of the Humanitarian Bowl, signing a four-year agreement to replace Roady's.[7] On August 3, 2011, the Idaho Potato Commission (IPC) signed a six-year naming rights deal to sponsor the bowl, renaming it the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.[8] In December 2017, IPC announced that they would be sponsoring the bowl for an additional five years.[9]

The game is the longest running cold weather bowl game currently in operation. The payout is $750,000, but teams are required to provide a corporate sponsor, purchase a minimum number of tickets, and stay at a selected hotel for a minimum stay. Because of this, 7–4 UCLA declined an invitation to the 2001 Humanitarian Bowl.[10]

From 2008 through 2012, bowl organizers, in conjunction with the Truckload Carriers Association, featured a "Highway Angel of the Year" to game attendees. Highway Angels are truck drivers who performed a heroic feat to save the life of another motorist.