The 2006 Alamo Bowl was a college football bowl game, one of the 2006–07 NCAA football bowl games that concluded the 2006 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The game was played in the 65,000-seat Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas on December 30. The game matched the Texas Longhorns versus the Iowa Hawkeyes and was televised on ESPN and ESPN-HD. It was the most watched bowl game in ESPN history.

Alamo Bowl officials announced that both schools sold their entire allotment of tickets, resulting in the fastest sellout in Alamo Bowl history. The attendance for the game was 65,875, which established a new record for the most people to gather in San Antonio to view a sporting event. Texas won the game 26–24.

Texas began the 2006 season as the defending national champions but lost early in the season to No. 1 ranked Ohio State University and finished the year with back-to-back losses to Kansas State University and Texas A&M University to end all hopes of repeating as national champions.

With their loss to Texas A&M, Texas looked north to the Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State Bedlam Series rivalry. If the Oklahoma State Cowboys had defeated the Oklahoma Sooners, then Texas would still have played in the Big 12 Championship Game with a chance to play in the Fiesta Bowl. That is because both the Longhorns and the Sooners would have had a 6–2 conference record, but the Longhorns would have won the tie-breaker by virtue of winning the head-to-head game against Oklahoma. Oklahoma won the game, however, so the next game for Texas would be their bowl bid, with speculation originally centering on the Cotton Bowl Classic or Gator Bowl on New Year's Day. The Holiday Bowl and the Alamo Bowl were also mentioned as possibilities.

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