2009 Fiesta Bowl

The 2009 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl game was a post-season college football bowl game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Texas Longhorns on Monday, January 5, 2009, at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Texas participated in the Fiesta Bowl because the Big 12 champion University of Oklahoma Sooners were participating in the 2009 BCS National Championship Game; however the bowl kept its ties to the Big 12 by selecting the Longhorns, who did not play in the championship game as they beat Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry, 45–35, then lost to Texas Tech and Texas Tech in turn lost to Oklahoma and dictated that a tiebreaker would decide that the highest BCS ranked team for the Big 12 South the week of November 28, 2008 would be in the title game. The Buckeyes were chosen as an at-large school as co-champions of the Big Ten Conference, having lost the right to play in the Rose Bowl due to a 13–6 loss to Penn State on October 25.

The Fiesta Bowl served as the penultimate contest of the 2008–2009 Bowl Championship Series (BCS) of the 2008 NCAA Division I FBS football season and was the concluding game of the season for both teams involved. This 38th edition of the Fiesta Bowl was televised in the United States on FOX. It was the third meeting in the history of the two schools.

The Longhorns (variously "Texas" or "UT" or the "Horns") were coached by head football coach Mack Brown and led on the field by quarterback Colt McCoy. The Buckeyes (variously "Ohio State" or "OSU" or the "Bucks") were coached by Jim Tressel and led on the field by Terrelle Pryor.

The victory by Texas gave Ohio State their third straight bowl loss, their longest such streak since the early John Cooper era (when they lost 4 bowls in a row from 1989–92). This follows a four-game bowl winning streak which tied for longest in OSU history.