The 2005 AutoZone Liberty Bowl was a post-season college football bowl game between the Fresno State Bulldogs and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane on December 31, 2005, at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, Tennessee. In a closely contested game which went back and forth Tulsa defeated Fresno State 31-24. It was the forty-seventh time the Liberty Bowl had been played and the final game of the 2005 NCAA Division I-A football season for both teams.

The game between the C-USA champion Tulsa and Fresno State from the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) was played at neutral-site Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium (Tulsa was once a WAC member, but joined C-USA in 2005). Tulsa automatically qualified for the Liberty Bowl after defeating Central Florida in the Conference USA Football Championship. Normally Tulsa would have faced TCU, the Mountain West Conference champion, but the Liberty Bowl's tie-in with the Mountain West had ended after 2004 and TCU opted for the Houston Bowl. Instead, the bowl organizers invited Fresno State. Fresno's invite came on November 23, 2005, just days after it lost to then-#1 USC 50-42 and ranked #16. The bowl was Fresno State's first appearance in a bowl game east of the Mississippi River.

Early in the first quarter Fresno State put together a long drive, going 54 yards in 15 plays. All but two of these plays were rushes, and none of the plays went for more than 8 yards. On the last play of the drive Fresno State faced 4th and 2 on Tulsa's 10-yard line but failed to convert, coming up empty-handed after eight minutes and 27 seconds. Tulsa was unable to capitalize on the stop and punted the ball away. Starting now from their own 46, Fresno State again drove 54 yards, this time with six plays in just under three minutes. Wendell Mathis ran the ball four times, finally scoring a touchdown on a 6-yard run putting Fresno State up 7-0.

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