1988 Aloha Bowl
The 1988 Eagle Aloha Bowl was a college football bowl game, the fourth of seventeen in the bowl season of the 1988 NCAA Division I-A football season. The seventh edition of the Aloha Bowl, it was played on December 25 at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii. The game matched the #14 Houston Cougars of the Southwest Conference against the #18 Washington State Cougars of the Pacific-10 Conference.
| 1988 Eagle Aloha Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | December 25, 1988 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Season | 1988 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Stadium | Aloha Stadium | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Honolulu, Hawaii | ||||||||||||||||||||
| MVP | Victor Wood (WR, WSU) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Favorite | Houston by 4½ points | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | John Laurie (Big Eight) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 35,132 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| United States TV coverage | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Network | ABC | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Keith Jackson, Lynn Swann | ||||||||||||||||||||
Underdog Washington State scored all of its points in the second quarter and forced a last-second Houston turnover in notching a 24–22 win on Christmas Day. The bowl appearance was Washington State's second of the 1980s and was the first bowl victory for Washington State since the 1916 Rose Bowl. This was the final game for head coach Dennis Erickson at WSU; he left for the University of Miami in March.
Washington State climbed up to sixteenth in the final AP poll, and Houston dropped to eighteenth.