Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How many people attended the 2007 Pacific Life Holiday Bowl?
Oneweek prior to the game, Las Vegas casinos favored Texas by 2points.[18] Rivals.com favored Texas by 1½points.[1] The game was played Thursday, December 27, 2007 at 7:00pm Central in San Diego's 70,561-seat Qualcomm Stadium[11][12] and the official attendance was 64,020.[2] ESPN provided both national television and national radio coverage of the game.[12] The temperature was 53°F (12°C) at kick-off but dipped into the 40s before the firsthalf ended.[19]
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.[4]
Beginning in 1995, the Big Eight Conference replaced the Big Ten and remained tied with the bowl through as the conference expanded to become the Big 12 the following year. The WAC's automatic bid was split, with first choice given to the Cotton Bowl Classic in Dallas, and a team from the Pacific-10 Conference was added as the alternate pick (meaning that, if the WAC champion played in the Cotton Bowl, the Pac-10's team would play in the Holiday Bowl). The WAC ended its association with the Holiday Bowl after the 1997 game, and the game became a matchup between the Big 12 and Pac-10.
The 2005 Holiday Bowl was a college football bowl game. The game was held at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego on December 29, 2005, with the Big 12 Conference's Oklahoma Sooners defeating the Pacific-10 Conference's Oregon Ducks, 17–14.
The 2006 Pacific Life Holiday Bowl was the Aggies' first bowl game since the 2004 SBC Cotton Bowl. This was Dennis Franchione's second bowl appearance in his four years of coaching at Texas A&M. The game in sunny San Diego, California began with Stephen McGee hooking up with Chad Schoeder for a 14-yard TD, but it was all California from then on out. Marshawn Lynch, DeSean Jackson, and Nate Longshore ripped the Aggie defense for 31 points in the second half.
The Trojans rose slightly in the polls to No. 12 in the AP Poll, No. 15 in the Coaches Poll, and No. 17 in the BCS standings. The 2007 Holiday Bowl was mentioned as a possible destination for the Trojans. Holiday Bowl executive director Bruce Binkowski said they would be very interested in pitting the Trojans against the Texas Longhorns. The two teams last met in the 2006 Rose Bowl for the BCS National Championship.
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 SeaWorld, 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.
When the Holiday Bowl chose ASU, the Sun Devils head Coach Dennis Erickson said, "We're excited about going to the Holiday Bowl. We get to play Texas. That's a great program, a historic program, and great opportunity for us. As I said last night after the game, we have no control over the BCS; all we can do is go out there and play football. Which we did a good job of 10 times. That's something that they have to deal with and they dealt with it and they did the best they can do with they system. This is just how it is. Our players are really excited about going where we're going."[12] Vice President for ASU Athletics Lisa Love said. "Playing a perennial power like the University of Texas, December 27 in the Holiday Bowl, which, by the way, is wonderfully hosted by that committee. This is a great, step forward. This is exactly what we wanted to do. We are very pleased to be mentioned in the same breath as a program like Texas."[12]
The Red Raiders' fans have set attendance records at 10 bowl games, including the team's first bowl game appearance in the 1938 Sun Bowl. Although 8 of the 10 attendance records were eventually broken, attendance records from 2 bowl game appearances, the 2004 Pacific Life Holiday Bowl and 2009 AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic, remain unbroken. The 2009 AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic's attendance record of 88,175 was the second-most attended bowl game of the 2008–09 bowl game season.
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.[5]
The football team began at the University of Arizona in 1899 under the nickname "Varsity" (a name kept until the 1914 season when the team earned the name "Wildcats"). The football team was notably successful in the 1990s under head coach Dick Tomey and his "Desert Swarm" defense that was characterized by tough, hard-nosed tactics. In 1993, the team had its first 10-win season and drubbed the powerhouse Miami Hurricanes in the Fiesta Bowl by a score of 29–0. In 1998, the team posted a school-record 12–1 season and made the Holiday Bowl in which it defeated the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Arizona ended that season ranked 3rd nationally and 2nd in several publications. Despite a stellar season, Arizona's single loss to UCLA caused the team to finish second in the Pac-10. From 1999 to 2007, Arizona had a mix of unsuccessful seasons without any bowl appearances. Then in 2008 Arizona returned to prominence with a successful season and a bowl win against BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl. Arizona has started to build up its old time success with a 6–2 record, and an appearance in the BCS standings ranked number 18. This is the first time they have been ranked in the BCS poll since 1998. After their win against Washington State, Arizona was bowl eligible for the third time in four years. After a win against USC, Arizona along with Nebraska was invited to the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl. It was the first time since 1998 that Arizona had played in the Holiday Bowl and the second time both schools have met each other at the bowl game. From November 2003 until October 2011, the program was led by Mike Stoops, brother of Bob Stoops, the head football coach at the University of Oklahoma (the 2000 BCS national champions); Stoops was fired on October 10, 2011.
The Sun Devils were competing in a bowl game for the fourth-year in a row and were appearing in the Holiday Bowl for the third time in program history. The Sun Devils lost to Arkansas, 18–17 in 1985 and to Kansas State, 34–27 in 2002. The Sun Devils held a 12–9–1 all-time bowl record. Their most recent appearance was a 4221 loss to Hawaii in the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl at the end of the 2006 season.[12]
The 2008 Pacific Life Holiday Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 30, 2008, at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California between the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the Oregon Ducks, and was part of the 2008 NCAA Division I FBS football season and one of the games in the 2008-2009 bowl season to be nationally televised by ESPN. The Ducks won the contest, 42-31.
The 2006 Pacific Life Holiday Bowl was a college football bowl game played December 28, 2006 in San Diego, California. It was part of the 2006 NCAA Division I FBS football season and one of 32 games in the 2006-2007 bowl season. It featured the Texas A&M Aggies representing the Big 12 against the California Golden Bears from the Pac-10. In the Golden Bears' second trip to the Holiday Bowl in three years, they routed the Aggies, 45-10. Each conference received $2.2 million for the teams playing.
The Holiday Bowl was founded to give the Western Athletic Conference an automatic bowl bid after the Fiesta Bowl, which previously had a tie in with the conference, ended its association with the WAC following Arizona and Arizona State (the latter of which served as the game's host) leaving the conference to join the Pacific-8 Conference in 1977. Thus, the Holiday Bowl inherited the Fiesta Bowl's former WAC ties and gave the conference's champion its automatic bid. For the first several years, the WAC champion played an at-large team in the Holiday Bowl. Beginning in 1991 and continuing until 1994, the Big Ten Conference was given the second bid, provided it had enough bowl eligible teams.
With a final regular season overall record of 8–4, Arizona accepted an invitation to the 2009 Pacific Life Holiday Bowl after this game. The Trojans were invited to the 2009 Emerald Bowl in San Francisco, they defeated Boston College 24–13.
Texas dominated the firstquarter and set two Holiday Bowl records. The Longhorns' first score, on a two-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Colt McCoy to Derek Lokey, was the quickest in game history at 13:39 remaining in the quarter.[20] Lokey is best known as the Longhorns starting nose tackle but he is also used as an offensive end in short-yardage situations.[19] He had lined up at full-back for the play.[21] At the Holiday Bowl luncheon the day before, Lokey had joked that there was not a play in the Longhorn playbook that would result in him being deliberately given the ball.[19] The Longhorns scored 21 firstquarter points – two more than SMU scored against BYU in 1980 in the old Holiday Bowl record.[2][20]
The Longhorns won the game 52–34. The 52points were the most ever scored by the Longhorns in their 47bowl games.[35] With the Longhorns in control through most of the game, many fans left early. The San Diego Union Tribune estimated that 5,000fans remained in the stands at the end of the game. The game lasted 4hours and 17minutes – equaling the 1989 Penn State – BYU game as the longest Holiday Bowl to date.[19][20]
The 2006 Chick-fil-A bowl kicked off on December 30, 2006 at 8:00 p.m. The game was nationally televised on ESPN, with over 5 million households tuning into the game at home, enough to earn ESPN a television rating of 4.8 for the broadcast. 75,406 people attended the game in person, making it the 10th consecutive Chick-fil-A Bowl sell-out, the first since the word "Peach" was dropped from the title, the largest crowd ever to attend an event at the Georgia Dome, and the third-largest bowl game in terms of attendance for the 2006–2007 season. 31,922 people attended the Chick-fil-A "fan fest" prior to the game, setting a new attendance record. Due to the proximity of Atlanta to the University of Georgia's main campus in Athens, Georgia, gave Georgia a home-field advantage. but the Virginia Tech fans, known for traveling well to their bowl appearances, quickly bought out their school's allotment of tickets and ensured a divided crowd.
Ultimately, the season would end in disappointment. Despite a stellar 10-1 record, they Bears were bypassed for a BCS Bowl bid by The University of Texas. As a result, they played in the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl against a 7-4 Texas Tech squad, where Cal was upset by a score of 45-31, a disappointing end to Arrington's college career.
Coach Taylor has been recognized as a top-25 national recruiter on six occasions (2005 and 2007 by Rivals.com, 2009 by ESPN, 2010 by Rivals.com and 2011 by 247Sports.com, ESPN and Rivals.com and 2012 by Rivals.com). He has experience coaching in 9 bowl games including the 1994 Alamo Bowl, 2002 Hawaii Bowl, 2005 Cotton Bowl Classic, 2007 Outback Bowl, 2008 Outback Bowl, 2008 Holiday Bowl, 2010 Outback Bowl, the 2011 BCS National Championship Game, and the 2011 Chick-fil-A Bowl.
Representatives from the Holiday Bowl were in attendance. According to the Austin Statesman, one of them said, "We’d love to have Texas, but they’re still hoping to wind up at the Fiesta Bowl." In order to reach the Fiesta Bowl, Texas needed Oklahoma to lose two games, giving Texas a spot in the Big 12 Conference Championship game, which Texas would then have to win. Another possibility was for Oklahoma to make it to the National Championship game and Texas being selected for an at-large Bowl Championship Series bid."
UT's first opponent of 2008 is Florida Atlantic University, who won the 2007 New Orleans Bowl and set a record for the shortest amount of time between starting a football program and securing a bowl victory.[32]
Since 2017, the sponsor has been San Diego County Credit Union, which formerly sponsored San Diego's other bowl game, the now-defunct Poinsettia Bowl. In 2015 and 2016, the title sponsor was National Funding, a San Diego-based alternative lender. Previous sponsors have included SeaWorld, Thrifty Car Rental, Chrysler Corporation (through its Plymouth brand), Culligan, Pacific Life, Bridgepoint Education and National University.
Texas' rivalry with the Texas Tech Red Raiders began in 1928 and through 2006, the Longhorns were 42–14–0 against Tech. In the 2006 contest, fifth-ranked Texas barely came away with a 35–31 win over an unranked Texas Tech team. Two days before the 2007 game, oddsmakers favored Texas to win by 6½ points. Pre-game speculation continued about what bowl game might select Texas. Various media predictions included the Gator Bowl, Cotton Bowl Classic, and Holiday Bowl. Holiday Bowl executive director Bruce Binkowski said his bowl would be very interested in pitting Texas against the USC Trojans, whom Texas defeated in the 2006 Rose Bowl. A BCS bowl was also still mentioned as a possibility, with Sports Illustrated saying the Orange Bowl could take Texas.