The Mountain West Conference was given four bowl games this season: Armed Forces Bowl, Poinsettia Bowl, New Mexico Bowl and the Las Vegas Bowl. A pummeling victory by TCU was not what the MWC needed given the opponent (NIU). Even a strong victory at both the Armed Forces Bowl (Utah v. Tulsa), and the New Mexico Bowl (NM v. San Jose St.) will not do enough to cement the MWC as a competitive league with strong teams. The victory needed for the conference is the Las Vegas Bowl where a MWC team has to show its grit against a program in the always strong division of the Pac-10. Well...tonight, BYU did exactly that.
Last night, in the Las Vegas night, the Cougars of Brigham Young proceeded to destroy the Oregon Ducks 38-8. Such a divisive blow has not been struck since my freshman year at the University of Wyoming when Wyoming defeated UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl in addition to seeing Utah obliterate Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl.
John Beck, one of several players who was arguably left out of the Heisman voting despite a fantastic season that ended up placing him as the second all-time passer in BYU history, had a fantastic game in which he threw for 27 of 46 for 375 yards of total passing. Furthermore, he passed for two touchdowns, but also gave up two interceptions. Beck also ran in for a touchdown in the game.
Fortunately due to some stiff defensive play by the BYU defense which limited both Oregon quarterbacks to only 164 yards passing for one touchdown which came late in the game (2 point conversion after was good). Both Brady Leaf and Dennis Dixon threw an interception in the contest. When the Ducks fell behind BYU rather quickly, they naturally opted to start throwing the ball more on their possessions. The Ducks never got around to aptly developing any sort of run game even though, on 16 carries by Dennis Dixon and Jeremiah Johnson, the Ducks had nearly racked up 100 yards on the ground.
Beck had a solid game in his leadership capabilities and a somewhat better than par game in statistics, but a real workhorse was Curtis Brown who was averaging seven yards each time he put his hands on the ball. He ended the night with 120 yards and two touchdowns in the victory over Oregon.
Another big player who was voted MVP of the Las Vegas Bowl was Johnny Harline who caught nine passes for a whopping 181 yards and a touchdown. Throughout the game it seemed like the Oregon secondary simply could not get complete coverage on Harline and he ended up being a strong hand in the BYU victory as well.
In the end of all this, the Cougars are winners, but the big winner is the MWC which had five bowl eligible teams this season in BYU, TCU, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming (who was tragically cut out of the New Mexico Bowl because of a final week NM victory over the SDSU Aztecs). By proving the competitive nature of this conference, it is obvious that there may be more respect given to this group of programs in addition to more bowl game opportunities.
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