The Fiesta Bowl

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It all started in 1968 when former Arizona State University President G. Homer Durham spoke at an athletic awards banquet and proposed that Phoenix should have a football bowl game.

Now, 40 years later, the Valley of the Sun is home to two bowl games, both managed and operated by the Fiesta Bowl, creating a “Festival of College Football” for fans locally and nationally to enjoy every year.

Since its first game at Sun Devil Stadium in 1971, the Fiesta Bowl has generated an economic impact of more than $2.2 billion to the state's economy and paid more than $389 million to universities and colleges nationwide.

In addition, 23 of the past 24 Fiesta Bowl games have been sell-outs, including the most recent game when Big East Conference champion West Virginia defeated Big 12 Conference champion Oklahoma at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale.

The Insight Bowl has quickly become one of the nation’s most exciting and highest-scoring bowl games, as Oklahoma State defeated an Indiana team making its first bowl trip since 1993. The two teams combined for 82 points, giving the Insight Bowl an average of 82.4 points in the last five years.

Behind the hard work and dedication of the Fiesta Bowl Board of Directors, this year led by Chairman Dave Tilson, there is guaranteed to be even more excitement in the year ahead, with the Insight Bowl scheduled for New Year’s Eve and the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl on January 5.

All of this is because of a dream that has since turned into reality, which started 40 years ago when President Durham proposed the idea. After that night, The 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.

Getting a bowl game anywhere is a long shot. Countless contingencies from cities all over the country had paraded before the NCAA's Extra Events Committee, lavish presentations in hand, only to be told, "No, the NCAA doesn't need another bowl game."

And 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.

"There was a lot of interest," Boatner said at the time. "A lot more than I thought there would be. I didn't believe that so many influential people could be brought together in one place."

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.

Key to the Fiesta effort was to win over the Western Athletic Conference for a tie-in. Then WAC Commissioner Wiles Hallock provided the direction to achieve that -- his immediate past position had been that of Director of Public Relations at the NCAA's headquarters in Kansas City.

With Hallock along, the Phoenix group appeared before the NCAA Extra Events Committee on Jan. 10, 1970, in Washington D.C. It was at that time that the group proposed to make the bowl a charitable venture, with portions of the proceeds committed to the fight against drug abuse. This was to be a key point for the Fiesta Bowl. The NCAA had granted only one new bowl during the 1960s, Atlanta's Peach Bowl, also a charity game.

The Fiesta's effort, however, was thorough. Then Washington State athletic director and chairman of the NCAA Extra Events Committee Stan Bates said that he never had seen a group as well prepared. A few months later, Bates would become commissioner of the Western Athletic Conference after Hallock moved to the Pacific-8 Conference.

The group stressed vital points in its presentation. They told the NCAA that the Rose Bowl was the only bowl game outside of the South and that Arizona had the population and the climate, the game would be played for a worthy cause and they hastened to add that good WAC teams had been overlooked for bowl appearances in the past.

"Your presentation was so well received that I can think of no important questions to ask," Bates said afterwards.

But victory was to be farther away. On April 27, 1970, the NCAA Council, the official policy-making body of the organization, rejected six bowl bids, including one for the Valley of the Sun.

The group could have taken the defeat and moved on in their lives. Instead, they kept on fighting. A year later, on April 26, 1971, the NCAA Council approved a bowl game in Arizona, and the Fiesta Bowl was born.