Late announcement for Hawaii Bowl pairing

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Boise State’s Shane Williams-Rhodes ran by Utah State’s Jalen Davis, bottom, and Nick Vigil during Saturday’s game. Both teams are among a dozen teams eligible for this year’s Hawaii Bowl. Conference championships are delaying the bowl from choosing teams.

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The Hawaii Bowl is looking at the latest date in its 13-year history for an announcement of the pairing of its Dec. 24 game.

"It could be Dec. 7 (Sunday) before we know who we have," said David Matlin, the game’s executive director. "We’ve never gone after the first full week in December before."

The bowl is scheduled to match representatives from the Mountain West and Conference USA.

Hawaii would have represented the MWC, but for a fourth consecutive year the Rainbow Warriors (4-9) did not achieve enough victories to be bowl eligible.

The selection process has been complicated by the debut of the College Football Playoff, which will pick the 12 teams for its six bowls, and will wait until the conclusion of this week’s conference championship games.

For example, the MWC must wait for the result of its title game Saturday between Boise State (10-2) and Fresno State (6-6) to see if the Broncos land a spot in the CFP before filling its six-bowl lineup.

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The MWC’s other bowl-eligible teams are Colorado State (10-2), Utah State (9-4), Air Force (9-3), San Diego State (7-5) and Nevada (7-5).

Meanwhile, should Boise State fall, C-USA is waiting to see if Marshall (11-1) wins its championship game against Louisiana Tech (8-4) and receives the CFP bid.

C-USA’s other bowl-eligible teams are Rice (7-5), Texas-El Paso (7-5), Western Kentucky (7-5), Middle Tennessee (6-6), Alabama-Birmingham (6-6) and, possibly, Old Dominion (6-6). ODU is a transitioning Football Bowl Subdivision member this season and the Monarchs would go to a bowl only if there aren’t 76 teams to fill the 38 bowl slots.