Plot Synopsis

Originally sponsored by the Arizona Sports Foundation, a nonprofit group of Valley civic leaders, the annual game was approved by the NCAA because it would feature the winner of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) playing at Sun Devil Stadium against an invited team from across the nation. Shortly after the game was approved, The Arizona Republic held a "Name the Bowl Game" contest, which garnered 382 suggestions from 6,620 individuals. A five-man committee reviewed the entries and chose Fiesta Bowl for the name, selecting it over Cactus, Copper and Canyon. Seventy seven entries listed Fiesta Bowl, and the winning entry, chosen at random, was granted four lifetime tickets to the game. In the inaugural event, Arizona State (as WAC champion) played in its home stadium to a sell-out crowd of 50,000 people, and won 45-38 over Florida State, which was invited after finishing the season with a 7-3 record. The bowl's tie-in with the WAC ended in 1978, when Arizona and Arizona State moved to the then-Pac-8 conference, making it the Pac-10. That same year, the Fiesta Bowl offered $430,000 to each team -- the fifth largest payout of any bowl game -- putting it just behind the Big Four New Year's Day games (Rose, Orange, Cotton, and Sugar Bowls), which is what made the Fiesta an attractive opportunity for schools. Arkansas and UCLA accepted bids to the 1978 Christmas Day game. Nine years later, Miami and Penn State, the nation's top two teams, battled for the national championship in the Fiesta Bowl, drawing the largest television rating in college football history at that time. In 1999, the Fiesta Bowl played host to the first BCS national championship game. The Fiesta Bowl tie-in is based on the college football playoff.