| 1982 Fiesta Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| 11th Fiesta Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | January 1, 1982 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Season | 1981 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Stadium | Sun Devil Stadium | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Tempe, Arizona | ||||||||||||||||||||
| MVP | Curt Warner (Penn State RB) Leo Wisniewski (Penn State NT) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Favorite | USC by 2 points[1] | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | John A. McClintock (Big Eight) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 71,053 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| United States TV coverage | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Network | NBC | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Charlie Jones, Len Dawson | ||||||||||||||||||||
The 1982 Fiesta Bowl was the eleventh edition of the college football bowl game, played at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona on Friday, January 1. Part of the 1981–82 bowl game season, it matched the seventh-ranked independent Penn State Nittany Lions and the #8 USC Trojans of the Pacific-10 Conference. A slight underdog,[1] Penn State won, 26–10.[2][3]
This was the first Fiesta Bowl played in January, in light of the bowl game's increasing popularity due to the sunny climate which had games with a team ranked in the top ten appearing in the eight of the first ten editions. It was the second Fiesta Bowl with both teams in the top ten; the first was six years earlier, and the third was in 1986.