2015 Arizona Bowl
2015 Arizona Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||
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Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||
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Date | December 29, 2015 | ||||||||||||||||||
Season | 2015 | ||||||||||||||||||
Stadium | Arizona Stadium | ||||||||||||||||||
Location | Tucson, Arizona | ||||||||||||||||||
MVP | Offense: James Butler (RB-NEV) Defense: Ian Seau (DE-NEV) |
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Favorite | Colorado State by 31⁄2[1] | ||||||||||||||||||
Referee | Tracy Jones (American)[2] | ||||||||||||||||||
Halftime show | Los Lobos Band | ||||||||||||||||||
Attendance | 20,425[2] | ||||||||||||||||||
United States TV coverage | |||||||||||||||||||
Network | ASN | ||||||||||||||||||
Announcers | Ron Thulin, Doug Chapman, Monica McNutt, and Shae Peppler[3] | ||||||||||||||||||
The 2015 Arizona Bowl (known as the 2015 Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl for sponsorship reasons) was a post-season college football bowl game between the Nevada Wolf Pack and the Colorado State Rams played on December 29, 2015, at Arizona Stadium in Tucson, Arizona. It was the inaugural edition of the Arizona Bowl and the final game of the 2015 NCAA Division I FBS football season for both teams. In an unusual circumstance for a postseason bowl game, both teams were from the Mountain West Conference. The previous non–championship bowl to feature two teams from the same conference was the 1979 Orange Bowl.[4][5]
Contents
Team selection
The Arizona Bowl, new for 2015, had tie-ins with Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference. The Sun Belt Conference was available as an alternative in the event that one of the conferences could not provide enough bowl-eligible teams.[6] At the end of the regular season the Mountain West Conference had seven bowl-eligible teams and six guaranteed spots, leaving the placement of individual teams uncertain.[7]
The outcome drew the ire of Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, who criticized how the NCAA selected teams with losing records to gain bowl eligibility "on an equal footing with 6-6 teams", explaining that "our Conference representatives argued steadfastly for an approach whereby all 6-6 teams would first be placed according to primary and secondary agreements among the conferences and bowl games. Our position was that only then would the safety net of 5-7 teams be activated for those games which had not yet secured participants, rather than allow those teams to fulfill conference agreements and usurp 6-6 teams from conferences with backup agreements."[8]
Colorado State Rams
Lua error in Module:Details at line 30: attempt to call field '_formatLink' (a nil value). The Colorado State Rams finished the regular season 7–5 (5–3 conference) under first-year head coach Mike Bobo, becoming bowl-eligible for the third straight year after defeating New Mexico.[9]
Nevada Wolf Pack
Lua error in Module:Details at line 30: attempt to call field '_formatLink' (a nil value). The Nevada Wolf Pack finished the regular season 6–6 (4–4 conference) under third-year head coach Brian Polian, becoming bowl-eligible after defeating San Jose State.[10] This will be Nevada's tenth bowl game in the last eleven seasons.[11]
Game summary
Scoring summary
Scoring summary | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Statistics
Statistics[2] | NEV | CSU |
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First Downs | 18 | 30 |
Total offense, plays – yards | 53–345 | 84–532 |
Rushes-yards (net) | 40–271 | 42–222 |
Passing yards (net) | 74 | 310 |
Passes, Comp-Att-Int | 6–13–0 | 22–42–0 |
Time of Possession | 27:30 | 32:30 |
References
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