Pacific Life Holiday Bowl

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 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 BYU.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, 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 won in a 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.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.dachshund racing circuit.
The Holiday Bowl is not to be confused with an unrelated game called the Holiday Bowl which was played in St.