The 1987 Fiesta Bowl was a college football bowl game that served as the final game of the 1986 NCAA Division I-A football season. Part of the 1986–87 bowl game season, the 1987 Fiesta Bowl also served as the National Championship Game, between the No. 1 ranked Miami Hurricanes, and the No. 2 Penn State Nittany Lions. It was the bowl's 16th edition, played annually since 1971 at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. Played at night on Friday, January 2, it matched the top-ranked Miami Hurricanes and #2 Penn State Nittany Lions. As the first part of NBC's tripleheader of bowl games on New Year's Day in the previous five years, the Fiesta Bowl had kicked off at 11:30 a.m. MST and led into the Rose Bowl. Since this year's game would determine the national championship, organizers decided to play it a day later on January 2; the kickoff was just after 6 p.m. MST, prime time in the Eastern and Central time zones. It drew a 25.1 rating for NBC, which the bowl organizers claimed was a record for any college football game; the 1980 Rose Bowl, which NBC also aired, drew a 28.6 rating but was seen in fewer homes than the Fiesta Bowl, which was viewed in 21.9 million versus the 21.8 million the Rose Bowl had been viewed in. Bowl selection The Fiesta Bowl had been played on New Year's Day since the 1982 game. This was because, despite its relatively new status, it frequently featured matchups between highly-ranked conference runners-up or major independents. Despite its growing prestige, the Fiesta was not considered by many to be a major bowl game. Instead, that distinction was given to four other New Year's bowls— the Cotton, Rose, Sugar, and Orange were all considered major bowls. Each of these bowls was required to take at least one conference's champion as per their charters regardless of the team's rank; the Southwest Conference champion hosted the Cotton, the Big Ten Conference and Pac-10 Conference matched up in the Rose, the Big 8 Conference champion hosted the Orange, and the Southeastern Conference champion hosted the Sugar Bowl. The Fiesta Bowl had a tie in with the Western Athletic Conference for its first seven years, but not since. Since its debut in December 1971, one team from the West was often invited, but the Fiesta Bowl was not bound by geography. The