November 24, 2008
Bowling
Written by: David
The discussion at this point in the season naturally revolves around what teams will go to what bowls. In that light it will be very interesting to see where BYU ends up. The most obvious choice is for BYU to go to The Las Vegas Bowl once again. This seems the most likely seeing as how they have sold it out in the past, and the bowl committee will be looking to make that same money again this year.
I must admit that I really don’t want this to happen. I am tired of Las Vegas. Even though it is considered a lesser bowl, I would rather see BYU go to the Poinsettia Bowl. In fact, I read an interesting idea where the Pac-10 could give up their half of the Poinsettia Bowl and let Boise State come down and play BYU. Now there is a grand idea.
It would be great to see BYU play a good team in a bowl for the first time in years. That would allow BYU to have something to get up for and challenge them to get some momentum going for next year. I am a little concerned that if BYU gets stuck playing another crappy Pac-10 team they will be lazy about it, and get beat which is definitely not what they need at this point.
It would be nice if the bowl environment would allow for BYU to go to some other bowl somewhere else, but with all of the conference guarantees that will never happen. I actually kind of miss the old days when you really didn’t know where your team would end up because there were very few guarantees. It gave you a chance to play teams you otherwise probably would not have, and it gave some suspense to the selection process.
I would really like to see them go back to a system where there are fewer guarantees. Maybe even a system where only the conference champion is guaranteed to go to a certain bowl, and the rest get to fight over what is left which would make for a much more interesting bowl season. They really need to do something though, because even some of the BCS games are losing their hype and the rest of the bowls totally are.
They need to go back to having bowl games on New Years Day with the National Championship that night. They complain that a playoff would lengthen the season too much yet the National Championship keeps getting pushed back later and later. There are even bowls after New Years that have no relevance in the national scene.
But, the NCAA is not going to change anything, and BYU will probably be stuck going to another Las Vegas Bowl and have to play another Pac-10 team. I guess it could be worse, they could be done for the season completely.
I understand that Tina may want to select BYU but I am hoping the conference steps in and allows BYU to go to San Diego. With the large LDS population it would boost attendance at the game. The problem is that TCU will not bring a crowd to Las Vegas and neither will the PAC 10 team. Boise State, if selected by the Poinsettia Bowl, will bring a large crowd and so that makes the TCU to San Diego more likely. But a BYU-BSU game could be a sell out.
BYU BSU would absolutely be a sellout. I realize there will be some fallout from BSU not getting a BCS berth, but they will want to take the opportunity to show they can be a well respected team. It is unfortunate that BSU couldn’t play them in the Las Vegas bowl, but I really don’t think there is anyway the Pac-10 would give up that spot.