2009 Fiesta Bowl --- Glendale, Arizona ---
The 2009 Fiesta Bowl will be played on January 1st 2009, in Glendale Arizona. The annual tradition of the Fiesta Bowl began in 1971, in an attempt to have an automatic bid for the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Champion. The association between the Fiesta Bowl and the WAC ended in 1978 when Arizona and Arizona State joined the Pacific 10 Conference.
Today, under the current BCS agreement, the Fiesta Bowl will play host to the Big 12 Champions. In the 2008 Fiesta Bowl, the Oklahoma Sooners faced off against the West Virgina Mountaineers, with the Mountaineers coming out victorious, by the score of 48-28. In the 2009 Fiesta Bowl, the potential teams include: the Boise State Broncos, the Texas Tech Red Raiders, the Texas Longhorns, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Missouri Tigers, and the USC Trojans.
The 2009 Fiesta Bowl will be played at beautiful University of Phoenix Stadium, in Glendale Arizona. In addition to currently hosting the Fiesta Bowl, University of Phoenix Stadium is also host to the Arizona Cardinals. The stadium opened in August, 2006. The stadium is the first in the United States to have a fully retractable natural grass playing surface. An opening at one side of the stadium allows the field to move outside of the stadium, so the entire playing surface is able to receive sunlight when not in use.
In addition to the retractable field the stadium also has a retractable roof, providing relief from the desert heat. The stadium has a permanent seating capacity of 63,400 and is expandable to just over 73,000. In the venues short history, it has already played host to one of the biggest sporting events in the world, as it hosted Super Bowl XLII in 2008.
