The 2007 Pacific Life Holiday Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 27, 2007, in San Diego, California. It was part of the 2007 NCAA Division I FBS football season and 1 of 32 games in the 2007–08 bowl season. It featured the Texas Longhorns from the Big 12 against the Pac-10 co-champion Arizona State Sun Devils. Texas won, 52–34, and set Holiday Bowl records for the earliest score and for most points scored in the first quarter. Texas also set a school record for most points scored in a bowl game. A bizarre play involving Chris Jessee, a member of the Longhorn football operations staff and the stepson of the Texas head coach, has been cited as one of the strangest plays of the season.
Bowl background 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.
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.
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.
Pre-game notes
Team selection Before the official bowl invitations were made, executive director Bruce Binkowski speculated that the matchup would be Texas vs. USC, which would have been a rematch of the classic 2006 Rose Bowl.
With Texas' loss to Texas A&M the Longhorns fell out of contention for a BCS bowl; their bowl situation would be decided largely by the play of other Big 12 teams. Number four Missouri beat number two Kansas to win the Big 12 North Division. Missouri rose to the top spot in the BCS rankings prior to facing Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship game. Oklahoma won the game to become the Big 12 Conference champion and secure their berth in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl. Even though Missouri defeated Kansas, won their division, and outranked Kansas in the BCS standings (number 6 compared to number 8 the Orange Bowl selected Kansas instead of Missouri to play in the 2008 Orange Bowl. BCS rules do not provide for all the highest ranked teams to be automatically included in BCS games; considerable discretion is given to the individual bowls in choosing among eligible teams. The Tigers were invited to play in the 2008 Cotton Bowl Classic; the Cotton Bowl Classic having first pick of Big 12 teams after the BCS bowls have made their selections. The Holiday Bowl had the next selection and they chose Texas.
Arizona State University was ranked number 11 in the BCS standings and they were eligible for a BCS bowl themselves, but like Missouri, ASU was left out of the BCS selections. They were the two highest ranked teams not selected for BCS bowls. This was primarily because the Rose Bowl selection committee chose to arrange a Pac10/Big10 matchup by pitting the lower ranked Illinois against Pac-10 representative USC. Another factor was BCS Buster Hawaii being ranked 10th; the rules specify that a non-BCS team is automatically selected if they are ranked 10th or higher and if an at-large bid is available. The Holiday Bowl selected the Sun Devils to face the Longhorns to set up the first meeting in the history of the two programs.
Texas
The bowl was the 10th straight bowl invitation for Texas, setting a new school record by beating the previous streak of nine straight bowl games from 1977 to 1985. The Horns entered the game with a 6–3 bowl record under head coach Mack Brown, including victories in five of their last six bowl games and three consecutive bowl wins for the first time in school history. Texas beat Michigan 38–37 on a last-second field goal in the 2005 Rose Bowl and defeated USC 41–38 in the final minute of the 2006 Rose Bowl. They beat Iowa 26–24 in the 2006 Alamo Bowl. It was the Texas’ 47th bowl appearance, which ranks second all-time in NCAA history behind Alabama's 54 appearances. That made Texas one of only four schools nationally to win three bowl games in a row. Including six seasons at North Carolina, Brown had directed his teams to 16 straight bowl games – the second-longest active streak in the nation.
The game was UT's fourth appearance in the Holiday Bowl. Except for BYU with eleven appearances, Texas has played in the Holiday Bowl more times than any other team. All three previous UT appearances were close contests, decided by a total of 17 points. UT defeated Washington, 47–43, in 2001, and fell to Oregon, 35–30, in 2000 and Washington State, 28–20, in 2003. In the 2001 game, quarterback Major Applewhite led Texas to set a Holiday Bowl record by overcoming a 19-point second-half deficit to win the game. UT scored 27 fourth-quarter points to secure the win. Brown said, "As a team, our focus will be on getting that 10th win and keeping our bowl winning streak alive. We've got a lot of work to do and the Holiday Bowl always seems to be a wild game with lots of sudden changes so we're looking forward to getting back on the practice field and preparing to play."
The game was the sixth time in the eight consecutive seasons that the Longhorns had played in either this game or in the Rose Bowl; both are held in southern California. This led Long Beach Press-Telegram columnist Bob Keisser to joke that the team would be renamed "the University of Texas-La Jolla."Long Beach Press-Telegram, Dec. 19, 2007, page C1 Entering the game, the Longhorns were averaging 462.0 yards of total offense (13th in the NCAA), 199.8 rushing yards (25th in the NCAA), 262.2 passing yards (36th in the NCAA) and 36.0 points per game (19th NCAA). Defensively, Texas was allowing 24.6 points, 374.8 total yards, 99.3 rushing yards per game (10th in the NCAA).
Because of the loss to Texas A&M, Mack Brown put the Longhorns through a boot camp in preparation for the bowl. Practices began at 6:00 am, starting positions were declared open to the best player, and players who made mistakes were forced to take ownership of those mistakes in front of the team.
Arizona State
ASU completed a 10–2 regular season and won a share of the Pac-10 Conference Championship. Their won–loss record tied that of the USC Trojans, but the Trojans won the tie-breaker by virtue of winning their game against ASU. The Trojans went to the 2008 Rose Bowl as conference champion and the Holiday Bowl selected ASU. The Sun Devils finished the regular season ranked number 11 in the final BCS rankings, number 11 in Coaches poll and number 12 in the AP rankings while Texas was number 19 in the BCS and number 17 in both the coaches and AP rankings.
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." 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."
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 42 21 loss to Hawaii in the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl at the end of the 2006 season.
Game summary
One week prior to the game, Las Vegas casinos favored Texas by 2 points. Rivals.com favored Texas by 1½ points. The game was played Thursday, December 27, 2007, at 7:00 pm Central in San Diego's 70,561-seat Qualcomm Stadium and the official attendance was 64,020. ESPN provided both national television and national radio coverage of the game. The temperature was at kick-off but dipped into the 40s before the first half ended.
First quarter Texas dominated the first quarter 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. Lokey is best known as the Longhorns starting nose tackle but he is also used as an offensive end in short-yardage situations. He had lined up at full-back for the play. 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. The Longhorns scored 21 first quarter points – two more than SMU scored against BYU in 1980 in the old Holiday Bowl record.
After Texas took the early seven point lead, the teams traded punts. On the first play of ASU's second possession, UT's Brandon Foster forced and recovered a fumble to bring about UT's third offensive series. Brown put in back-up quarterback John Chiles, who is considered a greater running threat than McCoy. Chiles lined up in the zone read offense and handed off to Jamaal Charles, who ran 48 yard to the ASU 4-yard line. On the next play, Chiles ran the ball in for UT's second touchdown.
The next ASU drive ended when Brandon Foster intercepted a pass at the Texas 11-yard line. The teams traded punts and UT began a new drive on their 30-yard line with 1:40 remaining in the half. McCoy threw a 55-yard pass to Quan Cosby and on the next play Jamaal Charles ran in 15 yards for the touchdown. Texas’ three touchdown-scoring drives were accomplished using only 2:04 of game clock. The UT defense forced two turnovers and held the Sun Devils scoreless for the period.
Second quarter In the second quarter, ASU's Rudy Carpenter led the Sun Devils to a first down at the Texas 14-yard line. They lost one yard on first down and an incomplete pass set up third and eleven. Carpenter attempted another pass but threw the ball hurriedly in an effort to avoid a sack by Texas linebacker Roddrick Muckelroy. The ball hit the ground and the officials initially threw a flag for intentional grounding; it would later be ruled a backwards pass which becomes a fumble once it hits the ground. The ball continued to bounce towards the Texas sideline with players from both teams in pursuit. The most bizarre event of the game occurred as the ball came close to the sideline.