2007 Holiday Bowl - Bowl Background

Bowl Background

The Holiday Bowl is a post-season NCAA-sanctioned Division I FBS college football bowl game that has been played annually at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, 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 Sea World, Thrifty Car Rental, Plymouth, and Culligan. Bowl games typically have contracts with specific colleges to provide eligible teams. The conferences affiliated with the Holiday Bowl has changed over the history of the bowl. As of 2007, the game features the 2nd place Pac-10 team and the 3rd place Big 12 team.

In 2004, one-loss California was blown out in an upset by the Big 12's Texas Tech, 45–31. Sonny Cumbie, Tech's quarterback, had one of the most memorable performances in Holiday Bowl history. In 2005, an Oregon team playing without its star quarterback (10–1) lost to a battered Oklahoma team, 17–14, solidifying many people's opinions that Oregon was unworthy of a BCS bid. Oklahoma's victory in 2005 was vacated as penalty for having two ineligible players on the team. As a result, there is officially no winner to that game. In the 2006 Holiday Bowl, the California Golden Bears defeated the Texas A&M Aggies 45–10.

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.