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Sports
Nov. 01, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

ED GRANEY: LV Bowl deserves team that covets trip

ED GRANEY
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Running a college football bowl game is a lot like running your life. There are priorities to consider, factors that outweigh others, specific issues of importance that must be met first.

Attendance is usually near the top of that list for bowls. On this, the Las Vegas Bowl again has wholly succeeded, having announced a sellout of its Dec. 22 game at Sam Boyd Stadium more than two months before kickoff.

But slightly trailing the number of bottoms in seats on the significance gauge is how competitive and compelling a game you offer fans. On this, committee members here are annually like most not associated with those five games from the Bowl Championship Series cartel: cautiously anxious.

Brigham Young defeated Oregon in last year's Las Vegas Bowl 38-8. It just seemed like 108-8. It wasn't over in the first quarter or at halftime. It was over the second Oregon lost its third straight to end the regular season and began considering all the places it didn't want to be over the holidays.

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    • "In all fairness to Oregon, their coaches and athletic director and everyone else with them came to myself and our committee members and said how happy they were to be here," said Tina Kunzer-Murphy, executive director of the Las Vegas Bowl. "They had been calling us to say if they couldn't go to the BCS national championship or Rose Bowl, this is where they wanted to be."

    Bowl directors can be some of the more eccentric sorts you will meet. They walk around wearing plastic smiles and some of the most hideous looking jackets ever stitched. This is what makes Kunzer-Murphy different. She's real, intelligent, sensible, passionate about her bowl -- and yet not in a way you're always looking behind her to find men in white coats holding nets.

    But know this: Oregon wanted to be here last year like I want to be shocked repeatedly in the face with a stun gun. It had nothing to do with the Las Vegas Bowl or how well it is annually run and everything to do with the Ducks being upset they couldn't play well enough to earn a more high-profile bowl. Too bad. Play better.

    Oregon lost its way into the game, the last thing any non-BCS bowl official desires.

    Oregon State is today the leading Pac-10 option for this year's Las Vegas Bowl (which will have the fifth selection from the league) out of a wild and unpredictable conference race.

    The Beavers are 5-3 and have a difficult enough remaining schedule (at Southern California, vs. Washington, at Washington State, at Oregon) to demand they win their way into any bowl. They would be ecstatic to be here, interested, prepared -- everything that Oregon wasn't.

    California is a bigger name right now, but how thrilled do you think a team that came within a few minutes of being ranked No. 1 would be to play here? USC is a monster name, but ask yourself the same question times 10.

    Whichever team lands on the Pac-10 side of the matchup probably will play BYU, which is 3-0 in the Mountain West Conference and seemingly last lost a league game when LaVell Edwards had hair.

    Kunzer-Murphy actually has been receiving e-mails from some deranged BYU fans who are upset by rumors the bowl won't select the Cougars a third straight year even if they are again conference champions.

    Memo to those unstable ones: BYU sells tickets like Bayer does aspirin, and its fans certainly would snatch up any not used by an opposing team. The only team that would come close to being a better Mountain West fit than the Cougars is UNLV and, well, I could easily lose track with the thousands of one-liners available about the Rebels ever winning a conference title.

    You can be assured BYU will be invited if it wins the league and maybe if it doesn't, because the selection committee does not comprise buffoons. Let's just hope whoever the Cougars play doesn't think of December in Las Vegas as one might imprisonment.

    Kunzer-Murphy and her staff have done too fine a job raising the level of their game to worry if one of the participants would rather be playing video games at home than football here. That was the case last year with Oregon, which made a really intriguing matchup on paper turn into a really awful game.

    "The worst-case scenario you can have is a team coming in that has been on a downward spiral," Kunzer-Murphy said. "Sometimes, you can't control that given where you select and where teams are slotted in their league. But we'd always prefer a team that has to win to get to our bowl."

    See. Intelligent. Sensible. Rarely, if ever, seen in a hideous jacket.

    Give her BYU-Oregon State and she'll really have it going on.

    Ed Graney's column is published Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjoural.com.



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    Dave wrote on November 05, 2007 03:45 PM: I totally agree. UNLV's stadium is horrible. It's small, dusty, in the middle of nowhere... not a good place for a bowl. The Vegas Bowl has great potential... but it really needs a makeover. And in the city of entertainment, they really need to put some effort into the halftime performances. What a joke!


    mattylew wrote on November 02, 2007 09:47 PM: Utah actually would be a good fit. They can't fill thier own studium but put a blackjack table in front of them and thier eyes will light up like the lights on Fremont St. i just think we deserve a more worthy opponent then the fouth place team in the Pac 10.


    Joe Speredon wrote on November 02, 2007 10:22 AM: The worst part about the Las Vegas Bowl last year wasn't even Oregon's play. It was the wretched version of the national anthem that was "sung". Please for the love of all that is good and holy in the world try to find someone in that city of entertainment who won't make me wish I was deaf.


    ogmson wrote on November 02, 2007 09:39 AM: Nice article and well done take on the Bowl picture in Las Vegas. The ONE suggestion for the Bowl is GET THE PARKING LOT PAVED! For crying-out-loud, even the Rose Bowl parks you on a Golf Course...I can see why BYU would always be picked above any other MWC team, (excepting of course, UNLV, as mentioned, but I would sooner win the Lottery than see that happen). For the yewts idiots...You can't put 19,000 fans in your own stadium for a home game, but you claim to be able to put 10,000 in Las Vegas?? Put down the weed, go get some sleep and try again. BYU put plus 22,000 fans in Vegas two years running and 10,000 in your own pile of a stadium on yewt hill. I love the fact that you at least pretend to dream.


    dave b wrote on November 02, 2007 09:04 AM: Kudos on those last two comments. If the Vegas bowl people want to make that a decent bowl the first thing they need to do is upgrade the place. Pave the parking lot, add seats to the north end, and improve the transportation situation. With all of the money rolling around Vegas you would think someone would cough up some cash. YOu could always put a stick of dynomite to it and then build a new one closer to town. Vegas deserves better. A new place would even be a good host to the NFR.


    JD wrote on November 01, 2007 10:19 PM: UTAH would be a perfect fit. They always have more fans in the stands than the rebels do when the play at Sam Boyd. Utah has always sold their allotted 10000 tickets the two times they have played in the Las Vegas bowl. Utah will have won 8 straight games and have a 9-3 record with wins over UCLA, Louisville, TCU, and BYU.


    J D wrote on November 01, 2007 10:16 PM: Your wrong Ed Graney. THE University of Utah has always brought many fans to Sam Boyd stadium for head to head match ups with UNLV as well as the two bowls games they have played here. Every time Utah has played UNLV, Utah has more fans in the stands than UNLV. Utah will win out and finish a respectable 9-3. With a 8 game win streak. Utah would be a GREAT fit!


    Bob R wrote on November 01, 2007 03:29 PM: David obviously doesn't know what he's talking about, playing the MWC is hardly a step down for the Pac 10. BYU killed Oregon last year, and Oregon is going to win the Pac 10 this year with the same exact team. This year alone, BYU and New Mexico beat Arizona, Utah crushed UCLA, and TCU beat Stanford in Palo Alto--the week after Stanford knocked off mighty USC. The problem with Pac 10 is their ego, they think they can just show up and beat any MWC team--which clearly isn't the case. I look forward to the MWC champ putting a beating on the Pac 10 once again this year!


    CD wrote on November 01, 2007 02:54 PM: As someone who comes from a former pac10 team (AZ) to LV I gotta say the only reason pac10 teams don't want to come here is because your stadium SUCKS. You come to Vegas to see the lights and the excitement yet your field is way the hell off the beaten path in a dirt lot that has no hotels within walking distance and no decent public transportation to get you to the games. I also had heard about how games here suck and frankly they do. I went to the UNLV hawaii game and the Hawaii fans turn out in DROVES yet there is hardly any good places to tailgate without getting a mouthful of dust.
    Pac10 teams are used to stadiums in the center of town, where the excitement is, and PLENTY of grassy or paved space to party before/after/during the game. They all are in cities with great public transportation that takes them directly to the game or are within walking distance of major hotels that cater directly to the fans.
    Everyone in the Pac 10 - especially those of us from U of A - know the quality of a BYU especially and others in the WAC and what they bring, its just no one wants to go to a place where its like they are a second rate fan and put on the outskirts of a city that should be embrasing the game.


    David wrote on November 01, 2007 07:57 AM: The Pac 10 Commissioner is horrible. The Las Vegas Bowl is a prime example. Nothing against the Las Vegas Bowl, but for the Pac 10 to play a Mountain West team is a step down for them. That's why it takes the Pac 10's fifth selection to the Mt. West first selection. With everything Las Vegas has to offer let the powers that be mix things up and get at least the Pac 10 third place bowl away from El Paso or push that much harder for the second place bowl from San Diego. But it won't happen. For the bowl to have any meaning it would have to be closer to New Year's Day and in Las Vegas with room rates and all the tourists, that will never happen. So be happy with whatever lame duck Pac 10 team falls into place. At least the big conference brings some attention to a meaningless bowl with a Mountain West team.