Arizona will face SMU in the Holiday Bowl on Jan. 2 at Snapdragon Stadium, the first time it will be played in January.
The Holiday Bowl has the second choice among the available former and current Pac-12 teams and is in a group with the Pop-Tarts Bowl and Gator Bowl that have the first picks among Atlantic Coast Conference teams following the College Football Playoff.
Holiday Bowl organizers selected the Wildcats (9-3) for their game Sunday after the Alamo Bowl chose USC (9-3).
Arizona enters the game with a five-game winning streak. It rose one spot to 21st in The Associated Press poll released Sunday and one spot to 17th in the College Football Playoff ranking released Sunday.
SMU received eight voting points in the AP poll.
The Mustangs (8-4) lost to California, 38-35, in their regular-season finale Nov. 29 after a three-game winning streak that began with a 26-20 overtime victory over Miami Nov. 1. The Hurricanes were 10th in the final College Football Playoff rankings released Sunday and will face seventh-ranked Texas in a first-round game Dec. 19.
SMU will be playing in the Holiday Bowl for the second time. The Mustangs lost to Brigham Young 46-45 in 1980 in a game they led 45-25 with three minutes, 37 seconds to play.
This will be the third Holiday Bowl for the Wildcats, who defeated Nebraska, 23-20, in 1998 and lost to the Cornhuskers, 33-0, in 2009.
The series is tied, 1-1, with SMU winning 29-7, in 1938, and Arizona winning, 28-6, in 1985.
Bowl organizers announced Aug. 29 that the game would be played Jan. 2, a date Mark Neville, the CEO of Sports San Diego, which operates the game, said "makes it easy for fans to follow their teams to San Diego."
Before the matchup was announced at Snapdragon Stadium Sunday, Sports San Diego announced a new title sponsor for the game, Trust & Will, the digital estate planning platform founded in San Diego in 2017, replacing DirecTV, the sponsor for the 2023 and 2024 games.
The game will officially be known as the Trust & Will Holiday Bowl.
