Local bowl needs better option from Pac-10

Tina Kunzer-Murphy has no choice but to put on her best Las Vegas Bowl smile and hope UCLA’s football team exhibits far more pride than what Oregon displayed during last year’s game.

Which is to say if the Bruins arrive next week in a comatose state, they’ll be miles ahead.

Executive directors of bowls and their selection committees want to offer a regular-season rematch like they want to see empty seats at kickoff, but that’s the game Las Vegas gets when Brigham Young plays UCLA on Dec. 22 at Sam Boyd Stadium.

The teams played in Pasadena on Sept. 8, when the Bruins won 27-17 and were ranked 13th and had not yet been blown out by that juggernaut named Utah or lost to the worst Notre Dame team in history.

I have no idea what they pay bowl media relations director Mark Wallington for his services, but it’s not enough. Finding ways to hype this matchup could prove a more difficult chore than whatever marketing sap is entrusted with selling season tickets for UNLV football.

Anyone prone to telling the truth will admit the Bruins represented the least desirable Pac-10 option for Las Vegas, a team that finished 6-6 and dropped four of its last five games, doesn’t travel well and will be led by an interim head coach after Karl Dorrell was fired following a loss to Southern California.

When introducing UCLA at a Thursday news conference, Kunzer-Murphy referred to the “tradition-rich Bruins,” at which time I immediately wondered when the bowl had switched to being a basketball game.

But this is how things fell, and it’s not overly complicated to understand how.

First, the contract. Two years remain on a Las Vegas Bowl deal with the Pac-10, and the time to renegotiate for a better positioning than a rotation of the league’s Nos. 4 and 5 choices can’t come soon enough.

Bowl officials here need to discover some way of convincing the Pac-10 it deserves at least the No. 4 pick annually or should begin considering what other leagues might be attracted to all this city offers in terms of accommodations and entertainment for visiting fans.

You can’t tell me the Las Vegas Bowl should share equal footing with the Emerald Bowl in the post-season landscape. No way.

It’s true there is more back-room dealing when it comes to bowl matchups than with your basic free-trade agreement. Deals are made all the time to supersede existing contracts, hoping to place certain teams as better fits in particular games and cities. The trouble is everyone involved must agree, and most often everyone doesn’t.

Know this: Bowl directors from games with Pac-10 affiliations (including Kunzer-Murphy) worked tirelessly to create different matchups than ones that emerged. But all it took was one program to oppose going somewhere it viewed as a lesser destination. UCLA did. All deals were off.

Officials here also rightfully covered themselves by exploring non-Pac-10 teams to participate if that conference had placed two teams in Bowl Championship Series games. Boise State was the one possibility most rumored, and you can imagine the excitement a game between the Broncos and BYU would have created both locally and nationally.

Again, countless things needed to happen. The Pac-10 had to fall short in its eligible teams. The Western Athletic Conference had to find an acceptable replacement to take Boise State’s place in the Hawaii Bowl. It never really got beyond the dreaming stage.

It comes down to this: The system as we know it stinks for most everyone not hosting a BCS game. Having the Mountain West Conference champion is terrific for Las Vegas, especially if BYU continues to win the league and sell out the game.

But continuing to have the fifth Pac-10 choice every other year is an ordinary deal at best, a fact that needs to change, or the chances of uninteresting matchups only will continue.

“If we’re going to have a conference champion, we have to do our due diligence and work as hard as we can to get them the best matchup,” Kunzer-Murphy said. “It’s up to us to negotiate better and get a better deal for our bowl. Do you think we like having the No. 5 choice? Are you kidding me? I can’t say that.

“But you attempt to manage what you can manage in a system run by the BCS. They control the bowls. The commissioners of those six power conferences. They make decisions on how we live within this system.

“My hope is that when we are afforded a small window of discussion in the near future, we can help make things better. I believe UCLA will come ready to play. I know they will. I don’t believe it will be another one-sided affair … Well, I sure hope not.”

Are the Bruins breathing?

If so, they’re at least guaranteed of being a better fit than Oregon proved last year.

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