that if they are bowl eligible, and not chosen for a NY6 or the playoff, that they get to play in that bowl. It makes sense on a lot of different levels. One Hawaii's travel costs each season are much higher than anyone else's so it would help them to save some $. But also it probably helps to get people into the stadium for the game itself. Flying to Hawaii, especially for Christmas Eve, isn't cheap plus people tend to want to be home for Christmas so other fan bases probably don't travel all that well to that bowl game and this makes it so that at least one of the teams in the game can get a good representation of fans actually at the game.

I would guess BYU's fan base on Hawaii is probably the second biggest next to UH anyway plus BYU tends to travel pretty well, especially to Hawaii, so from a bowl perspective, and to ESPN who owns the bowl, it is probably about as ideal a match up as they can get.