2008 Orange Bowl
The 2008 FedEx Orange Bowl was a post-season college football bowl game between the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Kansas Jayhawks on January 3, 2008, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Spread bettors favored Virginia Tech by three points, but in a game dominated by defensive and special teams play, Kansas defeated Virginia Tech 24–21. The game was part of the 2007–2008 Bowl Championship Series (BCS) of the 2007 NCAA Division I FBS football season and was the concluding game of the season for both teams. This 74th edition of the Orange Bowl was televised in the United States on FOX and was watched by more than eight million viewers.
Big Eight Conference football
The first Big Eight conference team to attend a bowl game was Missouri, at the 1924 Los Angeles Christmas Festival. Following the 1938 season Oklahoma became the second to attend a bowl game, at the fifth-annual Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida. In 1951 and 1952 the conference had a brief ban on its members attending bowl games. When the conference resumed accepting invitations in 1953, its champion regularly thereafter attended the Orange Bowl. This tradition was broken only five times: 1964 (when Nebraska faced #2 Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl); 1966 (when Nebraska faced #3 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl); 1973 and 1974 (when undefeated Oklahoma was on probation and barred from bowl games); and 1995 (when #1 Nebraska played in the Bowl Alliance championship vs. #2 Florida at the Fiesta Bowl).