The 2015 Arizona Bowl (known as the 2015 Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl for sponsorship reasons) was a post-season college football bowl game between the Nevada Wolf Pack and the Colorado State Rams played on December 29, 2015, at Arizona Stadium in Tucson, Arizona. It was the inaugural edition of the Arizona Bowl and the final game of the 2015 NCAA Division I FBS football season for both teams. In an unusual circumstance for a postseason bowl game, both teams were from the Mountain West Conference. The previous non–championship bowl to feature two teams from the same conference was the 1979 Orange Bowl.

The Arizona Bowl, new for 2015, had tie-ins with Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference. The Sun Belt Conference was available as an alternative in the event that one of the conferences could not provide enough bowl-eligible teams. At the end of the regular season the Mountain West Conference had seven bowl-eligible teams and six guaranteed spots, leaving the placement of individual teams uncertain.

The outcome drew the ire of Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, who criticized how the NCAA selected teams with losing records to gain bowl eligibility "on an equal footing with 6-6 teams", explaining that "our Conference representatives argued steadfastly for an approach whereby all 6-6 teams would first be placed according to primary and secondary agreements among the conferences and bowl games. Our position was that only then would the safety net of 5-7 teams be activated for those games which had not yet secured participants, rather than allow those teams to fulfill conference agreements and usurp 6-6 teams from conferences with backup agreements."

The two teams did not meet in the regular season, as they were in opposite divisions, and were not in the rotation to play each other during the season.

...
Wikipedia