MWC Sports Blog

The Mountain West bowl season opens with Wyoming facing Fresno on December 19th in the New Mexico Bowl. This match-up should be very entertaining and high scoring. BYU will face a very athletic Oregon State squad on December 22nd at 8:00. BYU will be playing in their 5th consecutive Las Vegas Bowl. Utah will face the Cal Golden Bears in the Poinsettia Bowl as the Bears will likely be without star RB Jahvid Best. Air Force has a tremendous defense which will have a difficult test against the high flying Cougars of Houston on New Years Eve at the Texas Bowl. The BCS came calling as a battle of undefeated teams will ensue when TCU faces Boise State on January 4th in the Fiesta Bowl. The entire bowl schedule has been released featuring games from December 19 through January 7th.

The bowl season kicked off on Saturday and the Mountain West Conference began as they would have hope. Colorado State took on Fresno State of the WAC and was able to handle the Bulldogs 40-35. After this nice start and somewhat surprising win, BYU was in action in the Las Vegas Bowl for the 4th season in a row. This time around BYU faced off with Mike Stoops’ much-improved Arizona Wildcats squad. After two straight wins in this bowl game BYU (10-3) did not have the defense to stop Arizona as the Wildcats got the win 31-21. After the dust settled on day one of bowl season the Mountain West was 1-1 with three bowl games remaining in this banner 2008 year for the MWC. Those three games include TCU in the Poinsettia Bowl, Air Force in the Armed Forces Bowl and Utah in the Allstate Sugar Bowl.

The Mountain West Conference had quite an impressive season knocking off BCS Automatic Qualifiers and sending three teams into the Top 15 in the nation. Now five MWC teams will participate in bowl games, from 6-6 Colorado State to BCS-bowl bound #6 Utah. Let’s take a look at each of the five bowl teams from the MWC and their bowl game match-ups.
- Colorado State - 6-6 - Colorado State will face Fresno State of the WAC in the New Mexico Bowl on December 20th - 2008 New Mexico Bowl preview
- Air Force - 8-4 - The Falcons of Air Force will face Houston in the Armed Forces Bowl on New Year’s Eve - 2008 Armed Forces Bowl preview
- BYU - 10-2 - The Cougars head to Vegas to play in the Las Vegas Bowl for the 4th staright season. After a loss to Cal in the 2005 Las Vegas Bowl, BYU has beaten Oregon and UCLA in the past two years and will face Arizona on December 20th. - 2008 Las Vegas Bowl preview
- TCU - 10-2 - As the #12 team in the nation, TCU has one of the best bowl match-ups on paper this season as they face #9 Boise State in the Poinsettia Bowl. This match-up gives the Mountain West Conference exactly what they want, they’re #2 team against the WAC’s #1 team with a chance to ruin the Broncos’ undefeated season. Boise State and TCU face off on December 23rd @ 8 pm on ESPN. - 2008 Poinsettia Bowl preview
- Utah - 12-0 - The Utes began their season with an “upset” of Michigan in The Big House and ended their season heading to a BCS Bowl game to face Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. At 12-0, Utah looks for their second win in a BCS bowl game in school history after crushing Pitt just a few short years ago. - 2008-2009 Sugar Bowl preview

On December 22nd, the UCLA Bruins will look to once again defeat the BYU Cougars in the Las Vegas Bowl. The two teams met up with the Bruins winning 27-17 despite BYU’s offense being the statistical winners. BYU outgained UCLA by 199 yards in that game, but started the season slow before finishing the MWC schedule 8-0 and 10-2 overall. UCLA went 6-6 on the season resulting in the firing of coach Karl Dorrell and looks to finish the season above .500. For a complete preview be sure to check out the 2007 Las Vegas Bowl preview at College Sports Fans.

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