BYU football: Vegas Bowl reps now mulling MWC invite

By losing Saturday to Utah, the best the BYU Cougars can hope for now is an invitation to the Dec. 20 Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl.

Had the Cougars upset the Utes, the Vegas Bowl folks would have been in a serious quandary as to which Mountain West team to invite. With Utah now headed to a BCS game, it will either be BYU, TCU or Air Force representing the Mountain West Conference. But no firm decision on which team will get the invite will come until after the BCS releases its lineup on Dec. 7.

"It's a little bit early for us to tell what's going to happen, but we have the first choice of the Mountain West Conference, but with three teams in the Top 25 we're not sure when we're going to be able to pull the trigger on that decision," said Tina Kunzer-Murphy, executive director of the Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl.

"Once the BCS takes its teams, then the others are there for us to choose from, so BYU, TCU, Air Force and the rest of the Mountain West teams we'll be able to select."

Most likely, the choice will be between BYU and TCU, following the Horned Frogs' rout of Air Force on Saturday. Vegas Bowl committee members will meet Monday to discuss the direction they want to go and then hold on to that priority privately until the BCS has finished doing its thing.

"We look at matchups, we look at end-of-the-year results, we look at how the teams travel into Las Vegas historically, and because they'll be playing the fourth-place team from the Pac-10 seeing how that matches up too," Kunzer-Murphy said.

Vegas Bowl officials feel they can't go wrong with any MWC team.

"It's been a great year for the Mountain West Conference, with a lot of great teams, and it's a wonderful feeling knowing that one of those great teams is going to be in Las Vegas on Dec. 20," she said.

BYU'S ALL-TIME LEADER: Austin Collie caught 10 passes for 104 yards, rushed twice for 14 yards and had a 70-yard kickoff return. But Collie wished he had done more.

"Obviously, I didn't do enough," he said. "I could have helped my team out more." The junior wide receiver broke the 100-yard receiving mark for the 10th straight game and became the Cougars' all-time leading receiver.

Collie now has 3,136 receiving yards for his career, surpassing the 3,065 yards accumulated by Eric Drage (1989-93).