BYU, Utah Utes football: MWC awaits bowl destinations

Las Vegas or San Diego?

That's the question BYU and Utah fans are asking when it comes to going bowling.

Who goes where, however, likely won't be known until Sunday. That's when the Bowl Championship Series will announce its participants. The Cougars are among 20 teams, including Mountain West Conference champion TCU, still under consideration for spots in the lucrative bowl games.

"I think it's a very exciting time for the Mountain West Conference," league commissioner Craig Thompson said in a teleconference Tuesday. "For the second consecutive year, we're in the national championship participation discussion."

TCU is ranked fourth in the BCS standings and is expected to be invited to the Fiesta, Orange or Sugar bowls. If there's an upset in this weekend's Big 12 or SEC championship tilts, the Horned Frogs could hop into the BCS national title game.

BYU, meanwhile, is considered an extreme longshot to crash the BCS.

The possibilities, though, have put the MWC's postseason arrangements on hold for now — leaving bowl-eligible TCU, BYU, Utah, Air Force and Wyoming to wait for official invitations.

"It's an extremely high probability TCU will be in a BCS bowl game," Thompson explained. "But until the announcements are made, we can't definitely pull triggers on all the placements."

Preliminary preparations are being made, however, following a 90-minute conference call with MWC officials, athletic directors and bowl partners.

Thompson said the group has a good strategic plan in place and a better than general idea where the MWC teams will land. The only thing that could alter the plans, he added, was "if the sun doesn't come up in the East."

An unlikely scenario where No. 6 Boise State moves ahead of No. 4 TCU, somehow, is seemingly the only way the Horned Frogs could get left out. And there's a real possibility that two outsiders (TCU and Boise State) receive BCS bids this year.

Because of the financial windfall that accompanies such berths, it overshadows the other games.

"Unfortunately or fortunately, however you look at it, the BCS mandates and dictates," Thompson said. "That's in excess of $10 million distribution to the Mountain West Conference playing in a BCS bowl. So finances do come into play and it's important, I think, to wait and see how those work out."