Sin City can be a piece of heaven

Now that the Las Vegas Bowl is here, and BYU fans are finally talking about the next football game — rather than the last one — this might be a good place to point out that if the Cougars win, this will be a downright respectable season.

You know me, Mr. Sunny Side Up.

I could find something good about mosquitoes.

There's no denying this has been a bad few weeks for the Cougars. The pain of losing to Utah on the last day of the regular season has lingered. The outcome was a punch in the gut on several levels. It handed Utah the outright conference championship, gave it the upper hand in the rivalry and launched the Utes to their second BCS bowl appearance.

Insult upon injury upon indignity.

Meanwhile, BYU is back to the familiar old Las Vegas Bowl for the fourth straight year, to play the fifth-place team from the Pac-10. Who knew Vegas could be so boring? Playing in the bowl isn't bad, but in hotel terms it's Circus Circus, not the Bellagio.

Cougar fans have been moping around for a month, knowing Utah is playing in the Sugar Bowl for approximately 18 times the payout and four times the TV audience.

But that's negative thinking. Fact is, the Cougars have been on a nice run for several years. If they win tonight against Arizona, it will mark their third straight 11-win season, which has happened only twice (1979-81 and 1983-85).

The current streak comes on the heels of 5-7, 4-8, 5-6 and 6-6 seasons.

So this is no time for Cougar fans to put paper bags over their heads.

There's also the wait-'til-next-year approach. Scheduled to return — unless the NFL interferes — are Austin Collie, Max Hall, Harvey Unga, Dennis Pitta and Jan Jorgensen. That's a nucleus that makes them a contender in the conference before a leaf falls.

Perhaps their three toughest conference games — Utah, TCU and Air Force — will be played at Edwards Stadium.

A win tonight could even leave BYU fans feeling better than they did after the heralded 2001 season, when the Cougars won their first 12 games but lost badly to Hawaii and Louisville at year's end.

Beating Arizona would give BYU an 11-2 record and a final top-20 ranking. That's better than a whack on the noggin with a blunt instrument, and something a hundred other teams would love to enjoy.

Also, if Utah gets wiped out in the Sugar Bowl against Alabama, and BYU crushes Arizona in Las Vegas, Cougar fans can spend the next few weeks savoring the moment, while Utah fans will be occupied explaining what the Utes were doing in a big bowl in the first place.

It would be a stretch to say winning the Las Vegas Bowl is better than losing the Sugar Bowl. But for its own mental health, BYU should pay no attention whatsoever to what Utah is doing. As the Great Rulebook clearly states: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his Sugar Bowl invitation, nor his conference championship nor his undefeated season, nor his TV exposure, nor anything that is thy neighbor's."

There is nothing wrong with BYU aspiring to win championships. It did so for 25 years and then some, including the 2006 and 2007 titles. But if Chick Atkinson had won 11 games in a season and earned a bowl berth when he was coaching at BYU, he would have thought he had died and gone to heaven.

Which, as a point of fact, he has.

The 2008 Cougars? They're not in heaven, they're in Sin City.

Which, all things considered, isn't a bad place to be.

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E-mail: rock@desnews.com