The Holiday Bowl was founded to give the Western Athletic Conference an automatic bowl bid after the Fiesta Bowl, which previously had a tie in with the conference, ended its association with the WAC following the departure of Arizona and Arizona State (the latter of which served as the game's host) to join the Pacific-8 Conference in the summer of 1978. The Holiday Bowl inherited the Fiesta Bowl's former WAC ties and gave the conference's champion its automatic bid. For the first several editions, the WAC champion played an at-large team in the Holiday Bowl. From 1991 through 1994, the Big Ten Conference was given the second bid, provided it had enough bowl-eligible teams.