Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl

The Holiday Bowl is a college football bowl game held each year in San Diego. Contested annually since 1978, the bowl pits a Big 12 squad against a Pac-12 opponent. The Holiday Bowl was the only postseason game contested in the San Diego area until its organizers founded the Poinsettia Bowl in 2005.

The Holiday Bowl was created to feature a Western Athletic Conference squad against one of the nation's best, usually a ranked opponent. The WAC team always was considered the host, and the opponent was chosen at large until 1990. In the inaugural game, BYU was the WAC representative and was highly-favored to beat the Navy Midshipmen in 1978. But Navy earned a come-from-behind 23-16 win to claim the first trophy.

BYU was an almost constant in the bowl, playing in its first seven editions and then four other times throughout its history (and earning the bowl the nickname "The BYU Bowl"). The 1980 game provided one of the most thrilling finishes in NCAA bowl history after the Cougars came back from a 20-point deficit and beat Southern Methodist on the last play of the game  a game BYU fans refer to as the Miracle Bowl.

Another early Cougars appearance in the bowl earned BYU the national championship in 1984, after the squad defeated Michigan. That was the first and only time a national title was won at the Holiday Bowl. And that game - in which No. 1 ranked and unbeaten BYU had to play in a mid-level bowl against a mediocre opponent - helped shape the entire philosophy and structure of the BCS.

In 1995, the Holiday Bowl reached an agreement with several conferences and bowls that would determine the participants over the next years. The Holiday Bowl would play either the Pac-10 runner-up or WAC champion, against the Big 12 third-selected team. That changed again in 1997, when the WAC broke up and decided not to partner with the bowl again. The bowl then played the second-place Pac-10 team against the Big 12's third-place team.

Currently, the Holiday Bowl's partnerships bring the third-selected team from the Pac-10 to play the Big 12's fifth selection, thanks to a 2009 agreement. It has become known as a haven for upsets in recent years, with several high-profile teams losing to higher-ranked (often one-loss) teams. That trend continued in 2010, with a 6-6 Washington team beating a Nebraska squad it had lost to in the regular season. The Holiday Bowl has grown a reputation as being a highly-competitive, down-to-the-wire bowl, from that first thrilling finish in 1980. Of the bowl's 34 editions, 17 have been decided by a touchdown or less and 20 games have been decided inside the final four minutes.

In 2010, Bridgeport Education signed on as the game's title sponsor. Previous sponsors include Pacific Life (2002-09), Culligan (1998-2001), Plymouth (1995-97), Thrifty Car Rental (1991-94) and SeaWorld (1986-90).