Fiesta Bowl
official home of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Insight Bowl and Festival of College Football
John Junker Biography
JOHN JUNKER
President and CEO
John Junker has played a major role and witnessed the growth of the non-profit and community-based Fiesta Bowl from an 11-event festival in 1971 to its current position as one of the nation's top collegiate football bowl games and largest civic celebrations.
Junker became the Executive Director of the Fiesta Bowl in 1990 and was named the President and Chief Executive Officer in January 2000. Since 1990, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl has hosted four national championship games – 1996 (Nebraska vs. Florida), 1999 (Tennessee vs. Florida State), 2003 (Ohio State vs. Miami) and 2007 (Florida vs. Ohio State).
The Fiesta Bowl organization recently hosted an unprecedented three bowl games in 11 days with the Insight Bowl on Dec. 29, 2006, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1, 2007, and the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 8, 2007, which attracted more than 143,000 out-of-state visitors and had an economic impact of $401.7 million to the state’s economy.
Since the Fiesta Bowl’s inception in 1971, Fiesta Bowl games and activities have generated an economic impact of more than $2 billion and attracted 1.3 million out-of-state visitors to the Valley of the Sun. The Fiesta Bowl has also provided more than $370 million to colleges and universities nationwide through team payouts.
Junker, who possesses more than 25 years of college football bowl experience, was presented with the Football Writers Association of America’s Bert McGrane Award during the College Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Festival in 2006. He was named the seventh most powerful person in college football by Sports Illustrated in 2003 and is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Football Foundation. His leadership and active participation in maintaining the health of college football continues to be acknowledged and praised by community leaders, conference commissioners and university presidents nationwide.
He began at the Fiesta Bowl in 1980 and was responsible for the development of the bowl's marketing department and participated in negotiations with Sunkist Growers, which resulted in the first corporate sponsorship of a New Year's Day bowl game. Junker left the Fiesta Bowl in 1989 to serve as the executive director of the Sun Bowl. He stayed at the Sun Bowl for one year, before returning to the Fiesta Bowl in 1990 as the bowl’s fourth executive director.
During his year as the executive director at the Sun Bowl, Junker assisted with team selection, network television negotiations, game management and relations with John Hancock Financial Services, the title sponsor for the bowl game. He also directed agreements with the first sponsor of the Sun Carnival Parade, which led to the first profitable parade in its 56-year history.
Since his return, Junker has helped the Fiesta Bowl become a member of the Bowl Championship Series, expand the growth of one of the nation's leading civic celebrations and increase the popularity of the community-based and volunteer-driven festival of 50 year-round events. Junker is also responsible for moving the Insight Bowl from Tucson to Phoenix, where it is now being played at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe and became the first bowl game televised on the NFL Network.
Junker served three years as the chair of the College Football Bowl Association, where he led the executive directors of the 19 bowl games and represented the bowls at meetings between the CFBA and the NCAA Postseason Football Committee. He also served as assistant press venue director for boxing in the Games of the XXIII Olympiad in Los Angeles and as press center director for the Pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II to Phoenix in 1986.
Junker originally got his start in collegiate athletics at Scottsdale Community College and Arizona State University, where he worked in the sports information office at both institutions.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of Catholic Life Productions and was named to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism Hall of Fame at Arizona State University.
A native of Akron, Ohio, Junker graduated from Arizona State University in 1977 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Broadcasting. He and his wife, Susan, reside in Phoenix with their daughter, Lucy, and son, Michael.