Fiesta Bowl
official home of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Insight Bowl and Festival of College Football
BCS History
The Bowl Championship Series was formed in 1998 following the termination of the three-year old Bowl Alliance agreement. The BCS was created as a mechanism for providing college football with a guaranteed match-up between college football’s top two team in a true national championship game.
The BCS has worked to perfection in each of its first two years, staging true national championship games in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in 1999 (Tennessee vs. Florida State) and in the Sugar Bowl in 2000 (Florida State vs. Virginia Tech).
The BCS is a spin-off of the Bowl Alliance, which was formed in 1995 and continued for three seasons. The Bowl Alliance was created to provide the best possible bowl games, while still honoring existing conference contractual agreements.
The Alliance system was designed to allow the champions of the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Southeastern and Big 12 Conferences, along with two highly-ranked at-large teams to be matched in three alliance bowls (Fiesta, Sugar and Orange).
The Bowl Alliance instituted two major changes that enhanced the opportunity to produce a national championship game each year. The Alliance plan included two at-large spots that were open to all Division I-A teams who qualified by achieving a minimum of eight regular season wins (or are ranked in the top 12 or now lower than the lowest ranked conference champion chosen to participate in the Alliance) and it eliminated conference champion tie-ins in the Alliance bowls to enable those bowls the flexibility to choose the best match-ups from the available pool of eligible teams.
In the first year of the Bowl Alliance, following the 1995 regular season, the Southwest Conference champion was also insured a spot. Thus, only one at-large spot was available and that was guaranteed to Notre Dame, providing the Irish finished among the nation’s top ten teams in either the Associated Press or USA Today/CNN regular season polls.
Prior to the Bowl Alliance, the Bowl Coalition was in place for three years. The Coalition was developed through a lengthy series of meetings in 1991 and early 1992 in an effort to bring order to a disruptive bowl system that had begun to extend post-season bids in early November – a full three to four weeks before the end of the regular season.
In existence for the post-seasons of 1992 through 1994, the Coalition provided a structure that enabled the champions of the Big East and Atlantic Coast Conferences and Notre Dame to meet either the champion of the Big Eight, Southeastern and Southwest Conferences in the Orange, Sugar and Cotton Bowls, respectively.
In addition, had the champions of the Big East and ACC or Notre Dame been ranked number one and two during any of those three seasons, they would have met in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship. Their vacated spots in either the Orange, Sugar or Cotton Bowls would have been filled from a pool of at-large teams made up of the number two teams from the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Eight, Pac-10, Southeastern and Southwest Conferences. To guarantee those at-large teams a post-season home, the Coalition contracted with the Gator and John Hancock Bowls to provide three additional slots for number two teams.
In the previous 56 years of post-season play, the number one and number two teams met just eight times.
The Coalition was a nine-year contractual agreement, subject to review every three years. After the first three years, the parties agreed to end the agreement in favor of an improved Alliance system.