The 2018 Holiday Bowl was a college football

bowl game In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivi ...

played on December 31, 2018. It was the 41st edition of the

Holiday Bowl The Holiday Bowl is a post-season NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision college football bowl game that has been played in San Diego since 1978. San Diego County Credit Union has been the game's title sponsor since 2017, and the bowl has b ...

, and one of the 2018–19 bowl games concluding the 2018 FBS football season. This was the second season in which the

was held at the

SDCCU Stadium San Diego Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium on the west coast of the United States, in San Diego, California. The stadium opened in 1967 as San Diego Stadium and was known as Jack Murphy Stadium from 1981 to 1997. From 1997 to 2017, the stadiu ...

. Sponsored by

San Diego County Credit Union San Diego County Credit Union (SDCCU) is an American financial services company headquartered in San Diego, California. The credit union is San Diego's largest locally owned financial institution and the fifteenth largest credit union in the U. ...

, the game was officially known as the San Diego County Credit Union Holiday Bowl.

Teams

The game featured the

Northwestern Wildcats The Northwestern Wildcats are the athletic teams that represent Northwestern University, located in Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern is a founding member of the Big Ten Conference and the only private university in the conference. Northwestern ...

, champions of the

Big Ten The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

West Division, and the

Utah Utes The Utah Utes are the intercollegiate athletics teams that represent the University of Utah, located in Salt Lake City. The athletic department is named after the Ute tribe of Native Americans. The men's basketball team is known as the Runnin' ...

, champions of the

Pac-12 The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division ...

South Division. The programs had previously met twice, with Northwestern winning in 1927 and Utah winning in 1981.

Northwestern Wildcats

Northwestern was defeated in the

2018 Big Ten Football Championship Game The 2018 Big Ten Football Championship Game presented by Discover was played on December 1, 2018 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. The eighth annual Big Ten Football Championship Game, it determined the 2018 champion of the Big Ten Co ...

on December 1 by

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

, then received and accepted a bid to the Holiday Bowl on December 2. The Wildcats entered the bowl with an 8–5 record (8–1 in conference).

Utah Utes

Utah was defeated in the

2018 Pac-12 Football Championship Game The 2018 Pac-12 Football Championship Game was played on November 30, 2018 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California to determine the champion of the Pac-12 Conference in football for the 2018 season. It was the eighth edition of the Pac-12 ...

on November 30 by

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, then received and accepted a bid to the Holiday Bowl on December 2. The Utes entered the bowl with a 9–4 record (6–3 in conference).

Game summary

Scoring summary

Statistics

References

External links

Box score
at

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

Game program
{{Utah Utes bowl game navbox

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