The 2009

Tostitos Tostitos is a brand of Frito-Lay that produces different tortilla chips and a range of accompanying dips. Varieties There are many varieties of Tostitos chips: * Tostitos ''Gold'' (and bite size ''Gold'') - a thicker and larger version of t ...

Fiesta Bowl The Fiesta Bowl is an American college football bowl game played annually in the Phoenix metropolitan area. From its beginning in 1971 until 2006, the game was hosted at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Since 2007, the game has been playe ...

game was a post-season college football bowl game between the

Ohio State Buckeyes The Ohio State Buckeyes are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio. The athletic programs are named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tree ...

and the

Texas Longhorns The Texas Longhorns are the athletic teams representing the University of Texas at Austin. The teams are sometimes referred to as the Horns and take their name from Longhorn cattle that were an important part of the development of Texas, and a ...

on Monday, January 5, 2009, at

University of Phoenix Stadium A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

Glendale, Arizona Glendale () is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, located approximately northwest of Downtown Phoenix. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it had a population of 248,325. History In the la ...

. Texas participated in the Fiesta Bowl because the

Big 12 The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its fo ...

champion University of Oklahoma Sooners were participating in the 2009 BCS National Championship Game; however the bowl kept its ties to the Big 12 by selecting the Longhorns, who did not play in the

championship game In sport, a championship is a Competition#Sports, competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match sy ...

as they beat Oklahoma in the

Red River Rivalry The Oklahoma–Texas football rivalry is a college football rivalry game between border rivals Oklahoma and Texas. The two teams first played each other in 1900, and the rivalry has been renewed annually and uninterrupted since 1929 for a tota ...

, 45–35, then lost to

Texas Tech Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. Established on , and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the main institution of the five-institution Texas Tech University Sys ...

and Texas Tech in turn lost to Oklahoma and dictated that a tiebreaker would decide that the highest BCS ranked team for the Big 12 South the week of November 28, 2008 would be in the title game. The Buckeyes were chosen as an at-large school as co-champions of the

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

, having lost the right to play in the Rose Bowl due to a 13–6 loss to

Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campu ...

on October 25. The Fiesta Bowl served as the penultimate contest of the 2008–2009

Bowl Championship Series The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was a selection system that created four or five bowl game match-ups involving eight or ten of the top ranked teams in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of American college football, including ...

(BCS) of the

2008 NCAA Division I FBS football season The 2008 NCAA Division I FBS football season was the highest level of college football competition in the United States organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The regular season began on August 28, 2008 and ended on De ...

and was the concluding game of the season for both teams involved. This 38th edition of the Fiesta Bowl was televised in the United States on

FOX Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

. It was the third meeting in the history of the two schools. The Longhorns (variously "Texas" or "UT" or the "Horns") were coached by head football coach

Mack Brown William Mack Brown (born August 27, 1951) is an American college football coach. He is currently in his second stint as the head football coach for the University of North Carolina, where he first coached from 1988 until departing in 1997, whe ...

and led on the field by

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

Colt McCoy Daniel "Colt" McCoy (born September 5, 1986) is an American football quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Texas Longhorns football, Texas, where he won several awards and honor ...

. The Buckeyes (variously "Ohio State" or "OSU" or the "Bucks") were coached by

Jim Tressel James Patrick Tressel (born December 5, 1952) is an American college football coach and university administrator who is currently the president of Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio. Before becoming an administrator, Tressel was the ...

and led on the field by

Terrelle Pryor Terrelle Pryor Sr. (born June 20, 1989) is a former American football wide receiver and quarterback. Considered the most recruited high school football-basketball athlete in southwestern Pennsylvania since Tom Clements, Pryor was widely regarde ...

. The victory by Texas gave Ohio State their third straight bowl loss, their longest such streak since the early John Cooper era (when they lost 4 bowls in a row from 1989–92). This follows a four-game bowl winning streak which tied for longest in OSU history.

Scoring summary

The Ohio State and Texas football programs

The

and the

are two of the most storied programs in college football. Before 2005 each school had participated in college football for more than 100 years. They are home to nationally known traditions from the Buckeye leaf stickers and the O-H-I-O chant at Ohio State to

Bevo Bevo may refer to: *Bevo (beverage), a non-alcoholic malt beverage brewed in the United States *Bevo (mascot), University of Texas at Austin mascot *Bevo HC, Dutch handball club *JetAfrica Swaziland (callsign BEVO), see List of airline codes *Beve ...

and the

Hook 'em Horns Hook 'em Horns is the chant and hand signal of The University of Texas at Austin. Students, alumni, and fans of the university employ a greeting consisting of the phrase "Hook 'em" or "Hook 'em Horns" and also use the phrase as a parting good-bye ...

of Texas. One of the three most victorious programs in college football history as judged by either number of wins or winning percentage, the University of Texas has traditionally been considered a college football powerhouse. From 1936 to 2004, the team finished the season in the top ten 23 times, or one-third of the time, according to the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

. The team that coach Mack Brown fielded in 2005 has been called one of the most memorable in college football history by ''College Football News''. Like the Longhorns, the Buckeyes are an elite football program. The Buckeyes program has produced 164 first-team All-American players, including seven

Heisman Trophy The Heisman Memorial Trophy (usually known colloquially as the Heisman Trophy or The Heisman) is awarded annually to the most outstanding player in college football. Winners epitomize great ability combined with diligence, perseverance, and hard ...

winners. The Buckeyes rank fifth in college football history in terms of both total wins and winning percentage.

Previous meetings

Texas and Ohio State have two of the longest-running programs in college football, but they have played each other only twice. Texas won the 2005 game en route to winning their most recent national championship (in the process becoming the first visitor to win a night game at

Ohio Stadium Ohio Stadium is an American football stadium in Columbus, Ohio, on the campus of Ohio State University. It primarily serves as the home venue of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team and is also the site for the university's Spring Commencement c ...

). In the 2006 game, which was won by Ohio State, OSU and Texas were ranked #1 and #2 respectively. It was only the 36th time that the top two teams in college football had ever faced each other outside of the BCS National Championship . OSU later played against #2

Michigan Wolverines The Michigan Wolverines comprise 29 varsity sports teams at the University of Michigan. These teams compete in the NCAA's Division I and in the Big Ten Conference in all sports except women's water polo, which competes in the NCAA inter-divisio ...

in the Buckeyes' regular season finale.

Leading into the game

After being passed over in the selection for the 2009 BCS National Championship Game, the Longhorns were selected to represent the

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

as host team in the Fiesta Bowl. The Buckeyes were selected as an "at-large" school from among the eligible teams. The day the bowl bids were announced the sports betting line opened with Texas as ten-point favorites, the most of any of the 2009 BCS bowls.

References

{{Texas Longhorns bowl game navbox

Fiesta Bowl Ohio State Buckeyes football bowl games Texas Longhorns football bowl games