Fiesta Bowl
The Fiesta Bowl is a game played since 1971 in college football , the college game operation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in American football in the USA , which usually takes place between January 1st and 3rd of each year. It is one of around 30 so-called bowl games in the post-season , in which, after the end of the regular season, teams compete against each other according to certain selection criteria and play for a trophy. The Fiesta Bowl is part of the Bowl Championship Series , a series of five selected and particularly prestigious bowl games. The Fiesta Bowl has been held since 2007 at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona , which opened a year earlier and is also used by the Arizona Cardinals NFL team . Previous location was the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona .
Historical information
The Fiesta Bowl was created through efforts by university officials, sports journalists and local politicians since 1968 to establish a bowl game in Phoenix , the capital of the US state of Arizona . Another reason were efforts by the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), founded in 1962, to receive invitations to a bowl for their winning teams. Because of this, it was contractually agreed for the Fiesta Bowl, which was held for the first time in 1971 until 1978, that the winner of the WAC should play against another team in this game. Other reasons for the NCAA's decision in favor of the Fiesta Bowl were the proposed charitable activities related to the game and the fact that at that time, the Rose Bowl, was only one bowl game outside of the southern United States.
As early as 1975, with the game between the team from Arizona State University as WAC champion and the team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as co-champion of the Big Eight Conference, two top 5 teams came together for the first time, and thus one top-class approach. After the teams of the University of Arizona and Arizona State University moved from the WAC to the Pacific-10 Conference in 1978 , the commitment of the Fiesta Bowl to the WAC ended. As the restrictions on the selection of participating teams were no longer applicable, the organizers of the Fiesta Bowl succeeded in organizing attractive games by inviting well-placed teams in the following years. In 1981, therefore, the date of the event was moved from the time between Christmas and New Year to the days after the turn of the year, the period for the higher rated bowl games called major bowls .
The breakthrough for the ultimate rise of the Fiesta Bowl to one of the most important bowl games came in 1986 when the two top-ranked teams from the University of Miami and Pennsylvania State University agreed to play in the Fiesta Bowl on January 2, 1987 the title of National Champion ( National Champion to play). The other four major bowls at that time, the Cotton Bowl , the Orange Bowl , the Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl , were bound by contractual obligations to certain conferences. The game, which the Pennsylvania State University team won 14-10, had the highest television audience rating in college football history. Just two years later, the organizers of the Fiesta Bowl succeeded again in hosting the National Championship Game with the game between the teams from the University of Notre Dame and West Virginia University . The Fiesta Bowl displaced the Cotton Bowl from the unofficial "Big four" selection. Until 1991, however, several teams declined invitations to the Fiesta Bowl because the state of Arizona refused to accept Martin Luther King Day as a holiday.
In 1992 the Fiesta Bowl became part of the Bowl Coalition, the predecessor of the current Bowl Championship Series (BCS). After the transformation of the Bowl Coalition into the Bowl Alliance with the 1995/1996 season and the associated introduction of a rotation of the National Championship Game between the bowl games involved, the national champion was again determined in the Fiesta Bowl in 1996, 1999 and 2003. In 2005, the Fiesta Bowl was the first BCS bowl game in which a team from a non-BCS conference took part. The Utah Utes of the University of Utah , who were then part of the Mountain West Conference (MWC), qualified for a place in the Fiesta Bowl after an unbeaten season. Subsequently, the team from Boise State University from the Western Athletic Conference succeeded in doing this in 2007 and 2010 , in both cases also after a season without a single defeat. The Fiesta Bowl 2010 between the Boise State Broncos and the TCU Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University from the MWC was also the only BCS bowl game so far in which both teams came from conferences that do not belong to the BCS.
The Fiesta Bowl is currently contractually bound to invite the winner of the Big 12 Conference founded in 1994 . The team for the second starting place can be freely chosen by the organizers.
Commercial Aspects
The first main sponsor of the Fiesta Bowl was the soft drink manufacturer Sunkist from 1986 until the Bowl Coalition was introduced in 1992 . From 1993 to 1995, the computer hardware and software manufacturer IBM took on the role of main sponsor, and since 1996 the Frito-Lay company has used the sponsorship of the Fiesta Bowl game to market its Tostitos products . The Fiesta Bowl therefore officially bears the name "Tostitos Fiesta Bowl" for advertising purposes.
The broadcast rights for the Fiesta Bowl, as for the other games of the Bowl Championship Series with the exception of the Rose Bowl, FOX since 2006 . It pays around 20 million US dollars per game for the contract, which runs until at least 2010. From 2010 to 2012 it will be broadcast by the American sports broadcaster ESPN .
As in the other four games of the Bowl Championship Series, the team payout guaranteed to the participating teams is around 14 to 17 million US dollars per team. The attendance is over 75,000 spectators, the Fiesta Bowl has been sold out almost every year since the mid-1980s. The audience rating for the television broadcast is around twelve to 15 percent, depending on the selection of the teams.
Most frequent participants and winners
The Ohio State University team with eight participations has been represented most frequently in the Fiesta Bowl so far . The Pennsylvania State University team was able to win in six games and thus achieved the most wins in the Fiesta Bowl.
The highest victory achieved the team of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the Fiesta Bowl 1996 with a 62 to 24 against the team of the University of Florida . The highest points game in Fiesta Bowl history was the 52-42 game between the University of Central Florida and Baylor University teams in January 2014. The lowest-scoring Fiesta Bowl game was the 10-10 game between the university teams of Arkansas and the University of California, Los Angeles in 1978.
Web links
- Fiesta Bowl Official website of the Fiesta Bowl
- BCS Football Official Website of the Bowl Championship Series