Mountainwest Musings
The Holiday Bowl should use the current instability of the bowl-conference alignments and return to its roots. From the Bowl’s website we read:
The Holiday Bowl initially was conceived to annually feature the Western Athletic Conference champion against a nationally-ranked opponent. The WAC champion served as automatic host team in the Bowl from 1978 through 1994. From the game's inception through 1990, the Bowl matched the WAC champion against an at-large team. In 1991, the Bowl reached an agreement to have the Big Ten third selection play the WAC champion.
In 1995, an agreement was reached between the Holiday Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Pac-10, Big 12 and WAC. The Pac-10 runner-up or WAC champion would play in either the Holiday or Cotton Bowl and the Big 12 third selection would play in the Holiday Bowl.
After the breakup of the WAC in 1997, the Holiday Bowl signed agreements with the Pac-10 and Big 12 conferences. Currently, the Pac-10 runner-up serves as the game's anchor team to oppose the third selection from the Big 12.
It is now time for the bowl to unite its two “children”—the Pac-10 and the successor to the broken-up WAC in everything but name, the MWC.
Rumors in the papers have the Big XII currently considering the Gator, and an improved Houston Bowl to leap frog the Holiday in the picking line of the Big XII. The Fort Worth and Insight bowls also want to close the gap. Unless the Holiday Bowl desires get into the bidding war and match the payments that the Houston and/or Gator provide, it is surely going to drop down the Big XII totem pole. Also factor in the possibility of two Big XII teams in the BCS and a reasonable scenario has the Holiday picking 5th after BCS, BCS, Cotton, Gator, Houston.
The Holiday Bowl began as a bowl featuring a conference champion, and if things break the wrong way it may have a bowl matching a Pac-10 runner-up vs a middle of the pack Big XII team. A match-up not worthy of the Holiday Bowl’s heritage.
If the bowl were to realign with MWC against the Pac-10 runner-up it would ensure itself of conferences loyal to the bowl (unlike the Big XII apparently) and fans within driving distance. Most years would pit a 1 vs. 2 or a 2 vs. 2. Such a game would keep up the tradition of the Holiday Bowl being the most exciting bowl of the year—a tradition started by the teams in the MWC. It would be true to having a champion face a ranked opponent—the same ideal the bowl was founded upon.
The loss of the Holiday Bowl is the one remaining wound to the MWC since it divorced the WAC. Perhaps sensing this loss, the organizers of the Holiday Bowl in conjunction with the athletic department of SDSU, formed the Poinsettia Bowl and affiliated with the MWC.
I would argue that the Mountain West is waiting for a bowl in the West to declare itself the “home” of the Champion—effectively what the Holiday Bowl did in 1978 to the WAC. The Insight, Vegas, Poinsettia, Emerald are all options, but the best home is the original home. The MWC and the Holiday have both been sojourning since 1997, its time for both, 30 years after planting them, to return to their roots.