Ferd Lewis: Mountain West needs to expand bowl opportunities

Most years simply being bowl eligible has been enough to guarantee Mountain West Conference football teams a place to play in the bowl-bloated postseason.

But 2018 wasn’t one of those years.

Instead, administrators, players, coaches and fans of several MWC teams were left to wonder — and point fingers — about who should be in and who should get left out in the cold.

The answer, amid seven bowl-eligible teams and only six bowl openings, was Wyoming. It was a particularly sad fate in Laramie, Wyo., where temperatures average between 19 and 31 degrees in mid-December.

Assuring that it doesn’t happen again is a major item that needs to be dealt with when MWC Board members convene June 2 and 3.

In previous seasons when UH clinched bowl eligibility there was a celebration and presentation to mark the occasion. But in November, just prior to kicking off the game against Nevada-Las Vegas, the conference cautioned that nothing was set in stone even if the ‘Bows won, and word on their fate would be a while in coming.

Things got tense enough leading up to the UH-San Diego State regular-season finale when Aztecs athletic director John David Wicker said, “The league always wants Hawaii (in the Hawaii Bowl) and ESPN wants Hawaii there for ticket sales. But if it came down to it and there was no other bowl slot, I would fight to say we beat Hawaii and we finished ahead of them. We should be in (the Hawaii Bowl) ahead of them or Boise or Fresno or whoever.”

Fortunately, UH prevailed 31-30 in overtime, so the then-8-5 Rainbow Warriors didn’t have to sweat the last week. But the 7-5 Aztecs did.

And when Wyoming got passed over for an MWC-contracted bowl in favor of Brigham Young, Cowboys fans seethed. Cowboys athletic director, Tom Burman, was moved to tweet, “ESPN, who owns both bowls, decided to flip BYU and Boise and move Boise to Dallas and have BYU play in Boise.”

These controversies come on top of a situation three years earlier when, due to a lack of alternatives, two MWC teams, Colorado State and Nevada, were forced to meet in the Arizona Bowl, a situation akin to taking your sibling to the prom. Then, a year later, the San Diego-based Poinsettia Bowl, a mainstay of the MWC bowl lineup, closed its doors.

The combination should give urgency for the 11-member MWC not only to step up its bowl alignment but define the process for prioritizing the selection of teams, something that began at its spring meetings last month.

At its upcoming meetings, UH athletic director David Matlin said there will be “ongoing discussions between all bowls and conference partners … for the next cycle, including selection procedures.”

The ESPN-owned and operated Hawaii Bowl is expected to sign a six-year extension with the conference. But where it will figure in the MWC lineup and what, if any, guarantees UH gets in regard to appearing in its backyard game amid the anticipated shuffling remain to be seen.

For example, with the 2020 season, the MWC is expected to lose its featured game, the Las Vegas Bowl, which will abandon the conference in favor of a Pac-12-SEC pairing when the Raiders’ $1.8 million, 65,000-seat stadium opens in Vegas.

But the conference will likely gain the LA Bowl that comes with the Rams’ debuting $4.9 billion, 78,467-seat home in Inglewood, Calif.

It now behooves the conference to find ways to expand bowl opportunities for its members and lay out a clear plan for prioritizing who gets them.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.