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The Fiesta Bowl, sponsored by Tostitos tortilla chips is a United States college football game played annually since 1971. Originally, the game was hosted in Tempe, Arizona at Sun Devil Stadium where it remained until 2006. The University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona is now the current venue.
In 1998 the Fiesta Bowl became part of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), and prior to 2007 every four years (most recently in 2003) was the designee for the national championship game.
After 35 wonderful years at Sun Devil Stadium, the Fiesta Bowl began a new journey to a new stadium, a new network and a new bowl model. On New Year’s Day 2007, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl kicked-off the double-hosting model at the new state-of-the-art Cardinals Stadium in Glendale. It has a retractable roof, a roll-out field and already has been named one of the top stadiums in the world.
The Fiesta Bowl took center stage when it hosted the first-ever Tostitos BCS National Championship Game on January 8, 2007. It is the sixth national championship game in the Fiesta Bowl’s history, but the first at the Cardinals Stadium, the first on Fox and the first as part of the new model created by the BCS.
Since the Fiesta Bowl’s first game at Sun Devil Stadium in 1971, the Fiesta Bowl has generated an economic impact of more than $1.6 billion to the state's economy and paid more than $342 million to universities and colleges. In addition, 20 of the past 21 Fiesta Bowl games have been sell-outs. All of this is because of a dream that has since turned into reality, helping to make the Fiesta Bowl one of the nation’s top bowl games.
It all started in 1968 when former Arizona State University President G. Homer Durham spoke to an athletic awards banquet and proposed that Phoenix should have a football bowl game. The idea could have died right there, as it had several times in the past, but Arizona Republic sports editor Verne Boatner wrote a column supporting the idea, and several Valley of the Sun business leaders banded together to bring a bowl game to Phoenix.
In December of 1968, a bowl game for Phoenix was merely an idea, let alone a well thought out plan to place before the NCAA. But then things started to roll. Prominent Valley sports enthusiast Glenn Hawkins called a meeting of the area's top community leaders, who ultimately put together the package that was to become one of the most phenomenal stories in bowl history.
Jack Stewart, who was one of the driving forces for bringing the game to Phoenix, was elected to head the effort. He and the current original members of the Executive Committee -- Hawkins, George Isbell, Jim Meyer, Donald D. Meyers, Karl Eller, Bill Shover and George Taylor, later to be joined by Don Dupont -- put together the successful plan that would get an NCAA sanction for the game.
On April 26, 1971, the NCAA Council approved a bowl game in Arizona, and the Fiesta Bowl was born.
Tostitos Fiesta Bowl Address
One Cardinals Drive
Glendale, Arizona 85305
Telephone: 480-505-0533
Tostitos Fiesta Bowl Website
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