pre-bowl week game over the past several years. It's the one game before that week that ESPN typically sends their A crew to...a smorgasbord of Rece Davis, Herbie, Palmer, Fowler and Musburger. It's also been and will again be the only early bowl season game on ABC.

For those reasons, ESPN wants that bowl in particular to have interesting story lines, teams of note, and a good game. With BYU (esp in a BYU/Utah game) they get both. From the bowl side, Vegas would love a BYU/Utah match up. Butts in seats, and it's not a stretch for the bowl (6th pick) to negotiate a deal with the Sun (5th pick) to land Utah and send the USC/UCLA loser to El Paso...win-win. And given Utah likely wins over CU and finishes 5th in the PAC, that's certainly a feasible scenario. BYU has always been good to and for the Vegas bowl. No one in the MWC is more appealing for Vegas this year.

BYU needs to win Sat to go 9-3 first. That happens and a match up with a pair of 9-3 teams from Utah in Vegas is very possible.