The 2025 bowl matchups are slowly materializing, and the third one to be finalized features a pair of 9-3 teams.
The South Florida Bulls (9-3, 6-2 American) will play the Old Dominion Monarchs (9-3, 6-2 Sun Belt) in the 2025 StaffDNA Cure Bowl. The Cure Bowl kicks off from Orlando on Dec. 17, with both teams making their first appearance in this bowl game.
The Cure Bowl is always in Orlando, but the game rotates between three different stadiums — Camping World Stadium in downtown Orlando, the Acrisure
Bounce House at UCF, and Exploria Stadium which serves as a soccer stadium downtown. The 2025 installment will be the seventh Cure Bowl at Camping World, which also hosted the event from 2015-18, 2020, and 2024.
South Florida seeks its third-consecutive bowl victory after winning the 2023 Boca Raton Bowl and 2024 Hawaii Bowl. However, the Bulls must do it without the services of head coach Alex Golesh, who departed to accept the Auburn job. While USF already hired Brian Hartline as its 2026 head coach, current defensive line coach Kevin Patrick will operate as the interim for this game. The Bulls are granted the opportunity for their third 10-win season in program history and their first since 2017. South Florida is often highly successful in the postseason with an all-time bowl record of 8-4 — the third highest win percentage among teams with 10 bowl games, only trailing Army and Marshall.
Old Dominion eyes plenty of accolades that haven’t been accomplished in nine years. The Monarchs are aiming for their first bowl win since the 2016 Bahamas Bowl and first 10-win season since 2016. They own the second-best overall record in the Sun Belt behind a breakout season for sixth-year head coach Ricky Rahne. Old Dominion can also snap its American Conference woes, boasting an 0-5 record against the league — four losses to East Carolina and a 2021 Myrtle Beach Bowl defeat to Tulsa. This will be ODU’s third bowl under Rahne, who seeks his first postseason win as a head coach.
This is the first American Conference vs. Sun Belt bowl matchup revealed in 2025, and the American finished 6-2 over the Sun Belt in the regular season series.
The 2025 Cure Bowl kicks off from Camping World Stadium in Orlando on Wednesday, Dec. 17 as the third bowl of the season. The contest kicks off at 5 p.m. ET and is viewable on ESPN.
