The fourth-to-last matchup of the 2025 college football season — the final non-playoff bowl game — kicks off in beautiful San Diego, CA.
San Diego welcomes the SMU Mustangs (8-4, 6-2 ACC) and Arizona Wildcats (9-3, 6-3 Big 12) in the 2025 DirecTV Holiday Bowl for an ACC vs. Big 12 matchup.
The Holiday Bowl hosts the third matchup between SMU and Arizona, and they’ve all been quite distant in time. The programs first met in 1938 with an SMU win in Dallas, and then rematched in 1985 with an Arizona win in Tucson
— both 22-point victories by the home team.
SMU came excruciatingly close to a second-straight College Football Playoff bid. The Mustangs led California with under one minute remaining in the regular season finale, but they surrendered a late touchdown to erase their ACC Championship Game bid. The Mustangs still enjoyed a seventh-straight winning season (fourth under head coach Rhett Lashlee), and they are 14-2 in conference matchups since joining the ACC. The one hurdle SMU must overcome is winning in the postseason. Including last year’s first round CFP game at Penn State, the Mustangs enter the Holiday Bowl with a 5-game bowl losing streak, last emerging victorious in the 2012 Hawaii Bowl over Fresno State.
Arizona enjoyed one of the most impressive turnarounds in college football this year, flipping from 4-8 to 9-3 under second-year head coach Brent Brennan. The Wildcats are currently positioned No. 18 in the AP Poll with an opportunity to finish ranked for the second time in three years. Arizona won its last postseason matchup in the 2023 Alamo Bowl over Oklahoma, and the school aims for its sixth bowl win in a 20-year span.
Both teams are second-year members of their conference, as SMU joined the ACC in 2024, simultaneous to Arizona’s entry into the Big 12. This will be the first-ever ACC vs. Big 12 Holiday Bowl, as Arizona receives the bowl’s legacy Pac-12 tie-in.
The 2025 Holiday Bowl is slated to kick off from the somewhat newly-constructed Snapdragon Stadium (opened in 2022) for the second-straight year. This bowl matchup between the Mustangs and Wildcats kicks off from Snapdragon Stadium on Friday, Jan. 2 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT. It is the only bowl game televised on FOX.
