The Holiday Bowl is a post-season NCAA-sanctioned Division I-A college football bowl game that has been played annually at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California, since 1978. The game is currently sponsored by Pacific Life Insurance, so it is known as the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl ; previous title sponsors have been SeaWorld, Thrifty Car Rental, Plymouth, and Culligan.
The bowl was founded in 1978 pitting the Western Athletic Conference champion against an at-large opponent. In the early days, those champions were invariably Brigham Young University Cougars. In the inaugural game on December 22, The Midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy came in with an 8–3 record and a Commander-in-Chief's Trophy and then capped the remarkable season with a 23–16 comeback victory over the highly favored Cougars. BYU played in the first seven Holiday Bowls, and later competed in an additional four games, prompting some to call it the "BYU Bowl." Fans remember the 1980 game as having one of the most exciting four minutes in NCAA history when BYU erased a 20 point Southern Methodist lead to win on the final play of the football game. BYU fans simply call the game "The Miracle Bowl."
Four years later, BYU, led by their coach, LaVell Edwards, won the national championship in the Holiday Bowl by defeating the University of Michigan Wolverines, coached by Bo Schembechler, 24–17. It was the first — and only — time that the title was won at the Holiday Bowl, or any other December bowl game. Because of the WAC's contract with the Holiday Bowl, BYU, #1 ranked and the only undefeated team in Division I-A going into that season's bowls, was obligated to play in the mid-tier Holiday Bowl against a mediocre (6–5) Michigan squad, a state of affairs that did not go unnoticed by the so-called major bowl games and the five (at the time) top-tier football-playing conferences. A series of bowl game structure changes over the next twenty years served to prevent a repeat of the 1984 Holiday Bowl scenario.
The game currently features the 2nd place Pac-10 team and the 3rd place Big 12 team. The game has recently become a type of "upset" bowl. For the past three years, teams rejected by the BCS have lost to heavy underdogs. In 2005, a 10–1 Oregon team (favored by 3 points while ranked 6th in the nation) playing without its star quarterback Kellen Clemens lost 17–14 to a surging Oklahoma squad that had won six out of its last seven. In 2004, one-loss California was blown out by Big 12 Texas Tech, 45–31. In 2003, Big 12 third-place Texas was knocked off by Pac-10 second-place Washington State, led by Matt Kegel.
In the fall of 2009, the Holiday Bowl announced that the Pac-10 second-place team will now take part in the Alamo Bowl. According to Bruce Binkowski, the Holiday's executive director, average ticket prices for the Holiday Bowl would have had to have been increased from $60 to $100 to match the Alamo Bowl's offer of $3 million (the Holiday Bowl was only offering $2.35 million). The Pac-10 and Big 12 retain their contracts with the Holiday Bowl, however, and the 2010-2013 matchups will pit the #3 Pac-10 team against the #5 Big 12 team.
One of the more popular (yet unusual) events associated with the Holiday Bowl is the Wiener Nationals, the national championships for the U.S. dachshund racing circuit. The game is also celebrated with the Big Bay Balloon Parade, organized by the Port of San Diego and currently sponsored by San Diego County Credit Union.
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