Holiday Bowl

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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 and is known as the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl. Previously, it had been known as the Culligan Holiday Bowl, Sea World Holiday Bowl and the Plymouth Holiday Bowl.

The bowl was founded in 1978 pitting the Western Athletic Conference champion against an at-large opponent. In the early days, that champion was invariably Brigham Young University. BYU played in the first seven of their record eleven Holiday Bowls 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 deficit to win on the final play of the game.

Four years later, the Cougars, led by their coach, LaVell Edwards, won the national championship in the Holiday Bowl by defeating the University of Michigan, coached by Bo Schembechler, 24-17. It was the first — and only — time that the title was not won in a January 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.

Today, the game features the 2nd place Pac-10 team and the 3rd place 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.

An unrelated game called the Holiday Bowl was played in St. Petersburg, Florida from 1957-1960.

Previous results

MVPs

See also

List of college bowl games

External links

• Official Website of the Holiday Bowl
• "Wiener Takes All" - a documentary about the Holiday Bowl's "Wiener Nationals" event
• {{{2|{{{title|Holiday Bowl}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database

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