The Washington State Cougars will spend the holidays in El Paso, Texas, for the Sun Bowl, per an official announcement on the game's Twitter account. The Cougars will face Miami of the ACC on December 26 in what should be a solid and entertaining matchup.

Washington State gets to the Sun Bowl by way of an 8-4 record in the regular season, including a 6-3 record in the Pac-12. That was good enough for third-place in the Pac-12 North, behind Stanford and Oregon, and was the third-best conference record overall, tied with USC and Utah.

Miami fired its coach, Al Golden, midway through the season and finished with an 8-4 record overall, including a 5-3 conference mark. After Georgia fired Mark Richt, the Hurricanes moved quickly to sign him, making perhaps the best hire of the coaching carousel season.

The Sun Bowl berth means the Cougars were selected near the bottom of the pile of 6-3/5-4 teams in the Pac-12, passed up by the Holiday and Foster Farms bowls, but they were swept up before falling to the Las Vegas Bowl, which was forced to select Utah (though you have to imagine they're pretty happy to have put together a Holy War between the Utes and BYU).

This will be the second Sun Bowl appearance for WSU; the first was back in 2001, when the Cougars defeated Purdue, 33-27, to pick up its 10th win of the season.