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With the upcoming trip to the Fiesta Bowl, Oklahoma's fifth-year seniors will have been to each of the four Bowl Championship Series games — Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta.

But quarterback Paul Thompson, one of seven fifth-year seniors who will start or play significantly in the Jan. 1 game, says his memories of the Fiesta Bowl will be good ones only if the Sooners beat Boise State.

That's why his favorite BCS experience so far is OU's 34-14 win over Washington State in the 2003 Rose Bowl in his true freshman season. It's also the only BCS game he's played in so far.

"I got in, I think, maybe four plays at the end,” Thompson said. "I was kind of wide-eyed, thinking it was crazy.

"It makes the trip seems more fun (when you win).”

Thompson was Jason White's backup in the 2004 Sugar Bowl, which the Sooners lost 21-14 to LSU.

"I didn't really like that trip,” Thompson said. "We didn't do nothing fun, but we lost the game. I think that's really what it was.”

•Tickets gone: The OU ticket office announced Monday that it had sold out of its allotment of 17,500 Fiesta Bowl tickets.

OU officials reported Saturday that the ticket office had just 200 tickets remaining. The game, at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., is expected to be a sellout.

•Invading Arizona: The Phoenix area will host three bowl games in 11 days, starting with the Insight Bowl between Texas Tech and Minnesota on Dec. 29 in Tempe.

A week after the OU-Boise State Fiesta Bowl, Ohio State and Florida play on the same field for the BCS national title.

While programs like OU and Ohio State can be expected to travel large groups of fans, it isn't known what to expect from Boise State supporters.

Lorraine Pino, Glendale's tourism manager, told the Arizona Republic her office received more than 300 e-mails and phone calls from potential visitors on Dec. 4, the day after the bowl pairings were announced.

About a quarter of those correspondences were from Broncos fans.

"When we look over requests, it's really splitting right down the middle. Each team is calling equally, and from a tourism standpoint, it looks like Boise visitors will be well represented,” Pino said.

•On the road: Going on the road for a bowl game is a unique event for Boise State fans. Of the six bowl games they've gone to since joining NCAA Division I-A, the Broncos have played four of them in Boise.

They are 3-1 in those games, 1-1 in bowls on the road.

The Broncos' lone bowl victory away from Boise was a 34-31 win over TCU in the Fort Worth Bowl on Dec. 23, 2003.

By Scott Wright