Phoenix - Best Of - BEST BOWL GAME - Insight Bowl (2007)

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BEST BOWL GAME

Insight Bowl

Venue

Sun Devil Stadium

500 E. Veterans Way

Tempe, AZ

http://thesundevils.cstv.com/facilities/sun-devil-stadium.html

Be Social

http://www.insightbowl.com

Until December 29, 2006 — and the stupefying football game that put it on the map — the Insight was second-tier all the way. It started life as the Copper Bowl in Tucson in 1989, enduring a decade of lame, forgettable matches that even Old Pueblans couldn't give a hang about. In 2000, the game moved to Phoenix's Chase Field. A baseball stadium. Mortifying.

Finally, with the Fiesta Bowl's departure to Glendale's new University of Phoenix Stadium in early '07, the Insight got a real home of its own. And, man, did it make the most of it. In its first year at Sun Devil, the Insight hosted the Texas Tech Red Raiders and Minnesota Golden Gophers in what looked to be a just-okay matchup. Uh, nuh uh. The Gophers led 38-7 in the third quarter when the boys from West Texas kicked it into overdrive and cranked out the biggest comeback in NCAA Division-I postseason history with a 44-41 win.

As delightful as the game was, we old-schoolers took even more satisfaction knowing that the Fiesta's now ensconced in Bill Bidwill's $200 zillion pinball machine and the Insight's in an honest-to-gosh open-air college-football stadium, with all the tradition and rah-rah (and ready access to Mill Avenue's bars) that entails.

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