 The Tostitos Fiesta Bowl is one the four games on the rotation to host the BCS National Championship game. Played at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, the game has become one of the premier bowl games in college football and one of the hardest bowl tickets to find, serving an automatic bid to the Big 12 champions and an at-large bid the years the game is not the national championship. The Fiesta Bowl was conceived, ironically enough, because the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) was continually passed over for major bowl games in 1968 and 1969. Years later, smaller schools would protest being overlooked by the Fiesta Bowl committee. The first game in 1971 featured the WAC champion Arizona State and Florida State. Arizona State won 45-38. Within a couple of years the game had bids accepted by the Big Eight and strong independent schools. The Fiesta Bowl terminated its relationship the WAC after the conference lost two of its top-notch schools to the Pac-10. Suddenly the bowl game was free to choose both its teams. At the same time the power in college football had shifted. By 1986 the two top schools were Penn State and Miami, both independents. They played at the Fiesta Bowl in the de facto college football championship. Suddenly the game had been catapulted into the top tier of bowl games. The Fiesta Bowl joined the precursor to the BCS in 1992 and the school eventually earned the right to feature the Big 12 champion when it was not hosting the national championship.
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