I had to look it up. They actually did beat Fullerton by 50, 108-58. I have to believe that was just an excuse. They wanted Air Force because they thought the service academy would be better for TV ratings, so they used Utah being good in basketball and playing that day as a justification.
That’s weak sauce served up by the Copper Bowl. It seemed like Utah’s football and basketball teams were having close to equal success during the exact same timeframe, so fans would have chosen the Copper Bowl as much as the CSU Fullerton game.
There is one big elephant in the room you completely ignored and it goes by 4 letters: ESPN. Bowl invites like that were heavily influenced by ESPN for the purposes of ratings and filling the stadium. head to head, overall records and on the field stats do not matter for bowl games like this. Ratings and attendance to. What do you think will draw more of both, a service academy with a millitary base nearby Tuscon or a University a lot further away in a completely different state? ESPN knows the answer to this and they influenced the decision. The bowl committee was not about to throw it's TV partner under the bus by admitting that ESPN influenced it, so the basketball team was the excuse they came up with. incidentally, Utah would get a Cooper Bowl bid the following year. They got completely demolished, 38-10, by Wisconsin, who starred a large Freshman tail back named Ron Dayne, who would go on to become the NCAA's all time leading rusher by the end of his 4 year career.
I don’t know about this one. Sure, the University of Arizona did have a long standing rivalry with Utah, but Weiser-Locke probably didn’t care. It’s more likely they chose Air Force due to the fact Tucson houses one of the biggest Air Force bases in the western United States and would be an easy sell. I attended that game (and many other Copper Bowls) and there were maybe 20k rooting for Air Force. Utah just didn’t have the draw, cuz no one showed up to the Freedom Bowl the year before and I know this because they played my hometown team Arizona. In my 11 years in the media in Tucson I never heard of this story.
Oklahoma State played TCU in basketball in 1997 in Ft. Worth on the same day that they played Purdue some 275 miles south in the Alamo Bowl. I thought TCU didn't adjust the game day or time to allow OSU fans to see both games. We cared more about the bowl game than the basketball game that we only won by 1 point.
Sounds to me like that basketball game was simply an excuse, rather than an actual reason to keep Utah out. A very flimsy excuse... But it also sounds like Air Force was also deserving of the bowl game... If the Falcons had been the one left out, what excuse/flimsy "reasoning" would the Copper Bowl have been able to give? Maybe they couldn't think of one, and decided to leave out Utah simply because they'd thought of a way to explain their decision off.
Most of your points are correct. But they could have actually "earned" it by just winning another wac game. Shouldn't leave it to a decision... After that, yeah, bad decision process.
I remember this controversy. I was in 5th grade at the time and my Ute-fan family were all PISSED. And it did nothing to dispel the idea that college sports officials just didn’t like Utah and wanted to screw us over at every possible chance. I like Utah football. I like Utah basketball. I want them BOTH to do well, though not one at the expense of the other. Which, as you said, shouldn’t happen. But there you go. That being said, I did enjoy all those clips of Utah whomping on BYU in this video. *chef’s kiss* Bravo, good sir.
I'm impressed. Once I was reminded I actually really do remember it and the fact that my family was quite angry. But I had to be reminded. I was using the fact that I was in 6th Grade at the time to justify the fact that the memory was so vague for me, but if you were in 5th grade and remember it perhaps that isn't a very good excuse ;)
The Copper Bowl's people were so full of crap that they should've sat on a toilet. Also, this is how having so few bowl tie-ins can hurt. Not only did Utah not go to a bowl, BYU (another co-champ, 7-4) and San Diego State (8-4, game at Hawai'i meant an extra regular season game) didn't, either.
The WAC in the mid-1990s was pretty solid. They just did an atrocious job of getting bowl deals during that time. It's one reason the conference lost all its top programs. In 1996, Wyoming went 10-2 and was ranked all season, and didn't get a bowl. San Diego State, which beat Wyoming, went 8-3 and didn't get one, either.
If JG8 sees this, that '96 Wyoming team's story would be a good one for a team that got the shaft. They started 9-0, went to the WAC championship game against No. 6 BYU and lost in OT to a team that finished 14-1, and didn't get a bowl even though they finished 10-2, ranked #22 nationally, and nine points from finishing 12-0.
@@johncate9541 It's hard to make deals when there weren't that many bowl games back then to begin wtih. ESPN changed all that by creating a bunch and those lower conferences were able to get tie-in deals.
@@johncate9541 Yeah. I had forgotten about that. That was the first season after the WAC expanded and added a whole bunch of new teams. They were the original "superconference," as they had 16 teams and they used the pod system.
NO, because the Rose Bowl berths are automatic. They are the pac-12 and Big Ten champions unless designated as CFP semis. So, the conference would have a tiebreaker procedure to determine the the invote and the committee would not be making the selection at all.
Basketball had NOTHING to do with Utah's bowl exclusion. Bowl committees want teams that travel AND travel WELL. They want fans to attend the game AND contribute to the local economy. Utah? Their fans are Mormons from one state (small fan base) who are not as likely as most fans to go out to bars, restaurants, attractions, and drink alcohol. They will just stay in their hotel rooms, watch TV, and sleep. THAT is why Utah got snubbed.
2007-08 Season Imagine Kansas Football Team 12-1 Was Screwed Over in the Orange Bowl on Jan 3 VS. Virginia Tech cause their Basketball Team was So Elite they won the Championship that Season The payout was 17 Million for the Orange Bowl
It honestly could have happened. Missouri and Kansas had identical 11-1 records with Missouri winning the head-to-head, which led to them going to the Big 12 Championship Game and losing to the same Oklahoma team responsible for their first loss, falling to 11-2. Missouri fans felt that they deserved the BCS Bowl as they were essentially being punished for playing an extra game. Obviously if Missouri had avenged their regular season loss, the Tigers get to play for the National Championship and Kansas is the obvious choice to replace the Big 12 Champion in the Fiesta, but as things stood, it was a controversial decision either way--Kansas being the only AQ team other than Ohio State with only one loss, Missouri only suffering their second loss because of a CCG and having beaten Kansas, plus their two losses were to the same opponent, and BCS rules allowing no more than 2 teams from a conference to go to BCS Bowls unless overruled by the "Top 2 teams go to the championship game" and "AQ conference champions automatically go to BCS bowls" rules (for example, let's say that LSU lost the 2011 SEC Championship Game and only dropped to #2, then they'd play #1 Alabama for the title while whoever it was who won the East that year would get the SEC's autobid to the Sugar Bowl). On that note, the 2007 season featured another example of a deserving team getting snubbed from a golden opportunity in the name of "tradition". Since Ohio State, the champion of the Big Ten, was the #1 team, the Rose Bowl got first pick of the at-large teams (which included two autobids, West Virginia of the Big East, which had an autobid but wasn't tied to any one bowl, and Hawaii of the WAC who was the lone undefeated team and had easily cleared the bar for the "BCS Buster" provisions to guarantee top teams from non-AQ conferences would get a shot at top bowls). And due to some frankly necessary losses of ranked-ranked matchups, 9-3 Illinois had risen up to #13. The Illini certainly weren't undeserving, as they were the ones responsible for Ohio State's lone loss, but their selection to the Rose Bowl was likely fueled by them being of the same conference as the team they were replacing. Let's pretend for a moment that instead of selecting Illinois, the Rose Bowl had made the decision on Kansas vs. Missouri. The Sugar Bowl of course selects Georgia to replace #2 LSU, and then it's the Orange Bowl's turn. Their decision is obvious; Virginia Tech-West Virginia is a lapsed rivalry game (granted, they had that option IRL, but I can't fault them their Kansas pick.) Now, in all honesty the Sugar Bowl should probably pick an AQ here, but they selected Hawaii over WVU, so we'll say that game doesn't change. Which brings us to the Fiesta, which needs to select an opponent for Oklahoma. And boy, did a great one fall into their lap--so great that you have to wonder if the "selection order" isn't just a crock and the BCS Bowls had been working together all along. Because the reason for denying 9-3 Illinois is because there was still one 10-2 team that was not blocked by the SEC and Big 12 already having two teams in BCS Bowls: Arizona State, co-champions of the Pac-10. The Sun Devils were likely lamenting what could have been anyway, having started 8-0 before losing a Top-5 battle with Oregon (just before the Ducks' season imploded due to an injury their quarterback suffered near the end of said ASU game) and then losing a crucial battle which gave the Trojans the Rose Bowl bid. Say, where is the Fiesta Bowl played, again? Yeah, exactly. The Fiesta Bowl could've had a Pac-10 co-champion in a virtual home game, but the Rose Bowl decided they wanted the other Pac-10 co-champion to play a Big 10 runner-up. USC dominated Illinois, of course.
@@CyberchaoX Yeah 2007-08 November was the craziest month ever with #1 and 2 constantly losing and making the tittle game unpredictable at times how did #7 Ohio State Get to be #1 after their win over Michigan the final week all the chaos was insane those memories are long gone with these Super Conferences merging College Football is a Monopoly
You do realize the bowl system doesn't work that way anymore right? The number of bowl games since then has tripled and every conference who has teams with winning records get into a bowl game and every conference has tie-ins with at least 3 or 4 bowl games. What happened to Utah does not happen anymore since the number of bowl spots now exceeds the number of teams with winning records.
Utah beat a ranked Georgia Tech in 2011, 30-27 in OT, coming back from a 14-point deficit. Many consider this game to be THE GREATEST Sun Bowl ever. You're welcome, El Paso. Feels like YET again, another Sun Bowl video, this time, in a Copper Trojan Horse.
If ure watching this when he says Cal... u notice an obvious word cut out after the word Cal in the visual so i figured it was Cal Northridge... well I was off!!
All imma say is this: It’s not like Utah’s basketball program is shit anyway. Maybe historically, but they just came off a meh decade of the 80’s, and a 14-14 93-94’ season. After the disastrous tenure of Jim “the Clown” Boylen, it’s even worse. And we wouldn’t have it any other way with how Football is thriving right now.
Am I missing something here? Utah wasn't that good in 1995? They finished 7-4 and were 3rd in the WAC. They were ranked ahead of Air Force but they had the same winning percentage as the top 4 teams ended up at 6-2 in conference, But Air Force had one more win and playing an extra game and had a better offense. Utah beat Air Force because they had a better Defense. And Bowls want lots of points and close games. Not defensive slogs and blowouts. And Air Force Head coach Fisher DeBerry was the years WAC coach of the year. The opponent was Texas Tech and they wanted a high scoring close game. Which they got as the final score was 55-41.The year before Utah won a close game against #15 Arizona, which is good. But did it in a 15-14 slogfest . If anything BYU is who got screwed. They were #2 in the conference and had the best player, QB Steve Sarkisian. (Of the available teams) And yeah they were just there the year before. When they blew out a horrible Oklahoma team during the Gary Gibbs disaster. Texas Tech With All American and Doak Walker award winning running back Byron Hanspard and legendary linebacker Zach Thomas. The game ended up pretty good but a Texas Tech vs BYU would have been a hell of a lot better than the game against the Dirt Burglars. Plus who doesn't want video of Zach Thomas piledriving ole Sarky into the turf?
IT's not about points and close games. It has nothing to do with anything on the field. It is about who can better fill the stadium and get better ratings on TV.
@@chriskay1449 that's true. But they also care about tv. But neither metrics were the point I was talking about. What It was presented was that Utah was this amazing team and there was absolutely no justified reason for taking Air Force over them and this basketball game was the only or at minimum the primary reason that the decision was made and it made no sense otherwise. My point is that's simply not the case. And there wasn't just one plausable other better option, but two. Both with the same record in conference play with 3 other teams and two of them had better offenses and more well known players. Utah wasn't going because they were just there, yes. And it makes sense, but they were still screwed out of the payout for that reason and they were a better option than Utah. But if that's the case then people shouldn't be so unable to understand the pick of Air Force, Because Air Force was more similar to BYU than Air Force but hadn't just been there. So the basketball game was probably mentioned and maybe even stood as a mark against the Utes, but it definitely wasn't a major or decision making factor based on the other far more rational reasons for the decision to be made as it was.
I had to look it up. They actually did beat Fullerton by 50, 108-58.
I have to believe that was just an excuse. They wanted Air Force because they thought the service academy would be better for TV ratings, so they used Utah being good in basketball and playing that day as a justification.
Exactly. The choice was really made by ESPN.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
One team hating another? Wisconsin baseball and hockey only coexisted for 42 seasons.
That’s weak sauce served up by the Copper Bowl. It seemed like Utah’s football and basketball teams were having close to equal success during the exact same timeframe, so fans would have chosen the Copper Bowl as much as the CSU Fullerton game.
The pale rider was fun to watch, but the opponent was not a high caliber match up, so if anything the bball team would have weak attendance that day
More. CS-F was a pre-season OOC game. PLENTY more fans would have traveled to Tucson rather than watch that particular hoops game.
Thanks for this story, love Utah stories I forgot about or have never heard
Go Utes! I vaguely remember this, but it was awhile ago. I remember going to the Freedom Bowl the year earlier.
Just come out and say “we prefer Air Force” and leave it at that
There is one big elephant in the room you completely ignored and it goes by 4 letters: ESPN. Bowl invites like that were heavily influenced by ESPN for the purposes of ratings and filling the stadium. head to head, overall records and on the field stats do not matter for bowl games like this. Ratings and attendance to. What do you think will draw more of both, a service academy with a millitary base nearby Tuscon or a University a lot further away in a completely different state? ESPN knows the answer to this and they influenced the decision. The bowl committee was not about to throw it's TV partner under the bus by admitting that ESPN influenced it, so the basketball team was the excuse they came up with.
incidentally, Utah would get a Cooper Bowl bid the following year. They got completely demolished, 38-10, by Wisconsin, who starred a large Freshman tail back named Ron Dayne, who would go on to become the NCAA's all time leading rusher by the end of his 4 year career.
Love all the basketball highlights against UNM.
I don’t know about this one. Sure, the University of Arizona did have a long standing rivalry with Utah, but Weiser-Locke probably didn’t care. It’s more likely they chose Air Force due to the fact Tucson houses one of the biggest Air Force bases in the western United States and would be an easy sell. I attended that game (and many other Copper Bowls) and there were maybe 20k rooting for Air Force. Utah just didn’t have the draw, cuz no one showed up to the Freedom Bowl the year before and I know this because they played my hometown team Arizona. In my 11 years in the media in Tucson I never heard of this story.
This ⬆️
It was a pretense. Air Force would draw better and that was all that was needed.
Damn you Rick majerus
Really interesting video--Your story-telling of this one and the controversy surrounding the situation were outstanding. Great job!
I’m taking air force over Utah every time
Oklahoma State played TCU in basketball in 1997 in Ft. Worth on the same day that they played Purdue some 275 miles south in the Alamo Bowl. I thought TCU didn't adjust the game day or time to allow OSU fans to see both games. We cared more about the bowl game than the basketball game that we only won by 1 point.
This is what happens when you have people in Tucson in charge of delegating things 😂😂😂
#GoUtes! 🔴⚪️⚫️
6:17 I won’t make a Zach Wilson joke if you don’t.
Sounds to me like that basketball game was simply an excuse, rather than an actual reason to keep Utah out. A very flimsy excuse...
But it also sounds like Air Force was also deserving of the bowl game... If the Falcons had been the one left out, what excuse/flimsy "reasoning" would the Copper Bowl have been able to give? Maybe they couldn't think of one, and decided to leave out Utah simply because they'd thought of a way to explain their decision off.
Well, Utah did beat them head to head that season, so that would have been a pretty decent "excuse."
This is one of the many reasons why the NCAS never has bowl committties anymore...
Most of your points are correct. But they could have actually "earned" it by just winning another wac game. Shouldn't leave it to a decision... After that, yeah, bad decision process.
I remember this controversy. I was in 5th grade at the time and my Ute-fan family were all PISSED. And it did nothing to dispel the idea that college sports officials just didn’t like Utah and wanted to screw us over at every possible chance. I like Utah football. I like Utah basketball. I want them BOTH to do well, though not one at the expense of the other. Which, as you said, shouldn’t happen. But there you go.
That being said, I did enjoy all those clips of Utah whomping on BYU in this video. *chef’s kiss* Bravo, good sir.
I'm impressed. Once I was reminded I actually really do remember it and the fact that my family was quite angry. But I had to be reminded. I was using the fact that I was in 6th Grade at the time to justify the fact that the memory was so vague for me, but if you were in 5th grade and remember it perhaps that isn't a very good excuse ;)
Blame the great Rick Majerus!
And yet, LSU didn't have this happen this year despite hosting KENTUCKY the same night
Shouldn't the men's basketball team's game have been rescheduled?
It doesn’t make sense. Utah had right to that Copper Bowl.
The Utes got shafted. The reasoning behind this is completely upsurge.
The next year, they returned to that bowl to play Ron Dayne and the Badgers. If my memory serves
The term is "creampuff."
I really hope this video is about the Sun Bowl... or Wham!
The Copper Bowl's people were so full of crap that they should've sat on a toilet. Also, this is how having so few bowl tie-ins can hurt. Not only did Utah not go to a bowl, BYU (another co-champ, 7-4) and San Diego State (8-4, game at Hawai'i meant an extra regular season game) didn't, either.
The WAC in the mid-1990s was pretty solid. They just did an atrocious job of getting bowl deals during that time. It's one reason the conference lost all its top programs. In 1996, Wyoming went 10-2 and was ranked all season, and didn't get a bowl. San Diego State, which beat Wyoming, went 8-3 and didn't get one, either.
If JG8 sees this, that '96 Wyoming team's story would be a good one for a team that got the shaft. They started 9-0, went to the WAC championship game against No. 6 BYU and lost in OT to a team that finished 14-1, and didn't get a bowl even though they finished 10-2, ranked #22 nationally, and nine points from finishing 12-0.
People forgot how back then really good teams were left out of bowls
@@johncate9541 It's hard to make deals when there weren't that many bowl games back then to begin wtih. ESPN changed all that by creating a bunch and those lower conferences were able to get tie-in deals.
@@johncate9541 Yeah. I had forgotten about that. That was the first season after the WAC expanded and added a whole bunch of new teams. They were the original "superconference," as they had 16 teams and they used the pod system.
If the Utah Basketball Team was playing on the same day that the Utah Football Team was playing in the Rose Bowl, would this kind of thing happen.
NO, because the Rose Bowl berths are automatic. They are the pac-12 and Big Ten champions unless designated as CFP semis. So, the conference would have a tiebreaker procedure to determine the the invote and the committee would not be making the selection at all.
Basketball had NOTHING to do with Utah's bowl exclusion. Bowl committees want teams that travel AND travel WELL. They want fans to attend the game AND contribute to the local economy. Utah? Their fans are Mormons from one state (small fan base) who are not as likely as most fans to go out to bars, restaurants, attractions, and drink alcohol. They will just stay in their hotel rooms, watch TV, and sleep. THAT is why Utah got snubbed.
Basketball is so lame
Since Jordan retired and Kobe died , it has essentially been a 3pt contest amongst best buds hopping teams like crazy, MJ would eat these kids alive
Haven’t cared abt the nba since Jordan, Bird, & Magic.
Well CONSIDERING the FACT that UTAH is WELL BELOW a 39.6 and shouldn't even BOTHER to SHOW UP for their games, this DOESN'T SURPRISE ME.
So Keith Van Horn screwed the youts?
Pale rider struck again
Mizzou Fbal and BBall played at the same time
27 Years Ago
2007-08 Season Imagine
Kansas Football Team 12-1 Was Screwed Over in the Orange Bowl on Jan 3 VS. Virginia Tech cause their Basketball Team was So Elite they won the Championship that Season The payout was 17 Million for the Orange Bowl
It honestly could have happened. Missouri and Kansas had identical 11-1 records with Missouri winning the head-to-head, which led to them going to the Big 12 Championship Game and losing to the same Oklahoma team responsible for their first loss, falling to 11-2. Missouri fans felt that they deserved the BCS Bowl as they were essentially being punished for playing an extra game. Obviously if Missouri had avenged their regular season loss, the Tigers get to play for the National Championship and Kansas is the obvious choice to replace the Big 12 Champion in the Fiesta, but as things stood, it was a controversial decision either way--Kansas being the only AQ team other than Ohio State with only one loss, Missouri only suffering their second loss because of a CCG and having beaten Kansas, plus their two losses were to the same opponent, and BCS rules allowing no more than 2 teams from a conference to go to BCS Bowls unless overruled by the "Top 2 teams go to the championship game" and "AQ conference champions automatically go to BCS bowls" rules (for example, let's say that LSU lost the 2011 SEC Championship Game and only dropped to #2, then they'd play #1 Alabama for the title while whoever it was who won the East that year would get the SEC's autobid to the Sugar Bowl).
On that note, the 2007 season featured another example of a deserving team getting snubbed from a golden opportunity in the name of "tradition". Since Ohio State, the champion of the Big Ten, was the #1 team, the Rose Bowl got first pick of the at-large teams (which included two autobids, West Virginia of the Big East, which had an autobid but wasn't tied to any one bowl, and Hawaii of the WAC who was the lone undefeated team and had easily cleared the bar for the "BCS Buster" provisions to guarantee top teams from non-AQ conferences would get a shot at top bowls). And due to some frankly necessary losses of ranked-ranked matchups, 9-3 Illinois had risen up to #13. The Illini certainly weren't undeserving, as they were the ones responsible for Ohio State's lone loss, but their selection to the Rose Bowl was likely fueled by them being of the same conference as the team they were replacing. Let's pretend for a moment that instead of selecting Illinois, the Rose Bowl had made the decision on Kansas vs. Missouri. The Sugar Bowl of course selects Georgia to replace #2 LSU, and then it's the Orange Bowl's turn. Their decision is obvious; Virginia Tech-West Virginia is a lapsed rivalry game (granted, they had that option IRL, but I can't fault them their Kansas pick.) Now, in all honesty the Sugar Bowl should probably pick an AQ here, but they selected Hawaii over WVU, so we'll say that game doesn't change. Which brings us to the Fiesta, which needs to select an opponent for Oklahoma. And boy, did a great one fall into their lap--so great that you have to wonder if the "selection order" isn't just a crock and the BCS Bowls had been working together all along. Because the reason for denying 9-3 Illinois is because there was still one 10-2 team that was not blocked by the SEC and Big 12 already having two teams in BCS Bowls: Arizona State, co-champions of the Pac-10. The Sun Devils were likely lamenting what could have been anyway, having started 8-0 before losing a Top-5 battle with Oregon (just before the Ducks' season imploded due to an injury their quarterback suffered near the end of said ASU game) and then losing a crucial battle which gave the Trojans the Rose Bowl bid. Say, where is the Fiesta Bowl played, again? Yeah, exactly. The Fiesta Bowl could've had a Pac-10 co-champion in a virtual home game, but the Rose Bowl decided they wanted the other Pac-10 co-champion to play a Big 10 runner-up. USC dominated Illinois, of course.
@@CyberchaoX Yeah 2007-08 November was the craziest month ever with #1 and 2 constantly losing and making the tittle game unpredictable at times how did #7 Ohio State Get to be #1 after their win over Michigan the final week all the chaos was insane those memories are long gone with these Super Conferences merging College Football is a Monopoly
When people defend the bowl
System and say how good it is for college football, this is another example as to why it deserves to blown up.
You do realize the bowl system doesn't work that way anymore right? The number of bowl games since then has tripled and every conference who has teams with winning records get into a bowl game and every conference has tie-ins with at least 3 or 4 bowl games. What happened to Utah does not happen anymore since the number of bowl spots now exceeds the number of teams with winning records.
Utah beat a ranked Georgia Tech in 2011, 30-27 in OT, coming back from a 14-point deficit. Many consider this game to be THE GREATEST Sun Bowl ever. You're welcome, El Paso. Feels like YET again, another Sun Bowl video, this time, in a Copper Trojan Horse.
That strangest thing I ever heard lol
Would have been easy by Utah officials to move the BB game to a time where it doesn’t conflict w/the Bowl Game
Yeah or postpone it to the next day.
If ure watching this when he says Cal... u notice an obvious word cut out after the word Cal in the visual so i figured it was Cal Northridge... well I was off!!
All imma say is this: It’s not like Utah’s basketball program is shit anyway. Maybe historically, but they just came off a meh decade of the 80’s, and a 14-14 93-94’ season.
After the disastrous tenure of Jim “the Clown” Boylen, it’s even worse. And we wouldn’t have it any other way with how Football is thriving right now.
👍👍
Maybe you should do a basketball channel to id be in for it
Not quite Kansas football being dismantled cuz when they finally made a bcs bowl the team got into it with the basketball team but close
Am I missing something here? Utah wasn't that good in 1995? They finished 7-4 and were 3rd in the WAC. They were ranked ahead of Air Force but they had the same winning percentage as the top 4 teams ended up at 6-2 in conference, But Air Force had one more win and playing an extra game and had a better offense. Utah beat Air Force because they had a better Defense. And Bowls want lots of points and close games. Not defensive slogs and blowouts. And Air Force Head coach Fisher DeBerry was the years WAC coach of the year.
The opponent was Texas Tech and they wanted a high scoring close game. Which they got as the final score was 55-41.The year before Utah won a close game against #15 Arizona, which is good. But did it in a 15-14 slogfest . If anything BYU is who got screwed. They were #2 in the conference and had the best player, QB Steve Sarkisian. (Of the available teams) And yeah they were just there the year before. When they blew out a horrible Oklahoma team during the Gary Gibbs disaster. Texas Tech With All American and Doak Walker award winning running back Byron Hanspard and legendary linebacker Zach Thomas. The game ended up pretty good but a Texas Tech vs BYU would have been a hell of a lot better than the game against the Dirt Burglars.
Plus who doesn't want video of Zach Thomas piledriving ole Sarky into the turf?
IT's not about points and close games. It has nothing to do with anything on the field. It is about who can better fill the stadium and get better ratings on TV.
@@chriskay1449 that's true. But they also care about tv. But neither metrics were the point I was talking about. What It was presented was that Utah was this amazing team and there was absolutely no justified reason for taking Air Force over them and this basketball game was the only or at minimum the primary reason that the decision was made and it made no sense otherwise. My point is that's simply not the case. And there wasn't just one plausable other better option, but two. Both with the same record in conference play with 3 other teams and two of them had better offenses and more well known players. Utah wasn't going because they were just there, yes. And it makes sense, but they were still screwed out of the payout for that reason and they were a better option than Utah. But if that's the case then people shouldn't be so unable to understand the pick of Air Force, Because Air Force was more similar to BYU than Air Force but hadn't just been there. So the basketball game was probably mentioned and maybe even stood as a mark against the Utes, but it definitely wasn't a major or decision making factor based on the other far more rational reasons for the decision to be made as it was.