Fresno’s opponent still up in the air

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Nov. 29, 1999 | 10:59 a.m.

Only 20 days before kickoff, the Las Vegas Bowl still doesn't know which Mountain West Conference team will be facing Fresno State on Dec. 18 at Sam Boyd Stadium.

That should change this afternoon, however.

The Liberty Bowl, which gets first pick of MWC teams, will finally announce its pick late this afternoon, flying to the campus of the lucky school to make the official announcement.

That will free the Las Vegas Bowl to do something it wanted to do last Monday: invite its MWC team, likely BYU or Utah.

As of late Sunday night, the Liberty Bowl hadn't tipped its hand to any of the three schools in the running -- BYU, Colorado State or Utah -- all of which finished with 8-3 overall records and 5-2 conference marks.

It is believed that the Liberty Bowl wants to take the MWC team with the highest BCS ranking to face Conference USA champ Southern Miss on New Year's Eve in Memphis. That will likely be BYU, which cracked the coaches' poll at No. 25 on Sunday and is the only Mountain West team that is ranked in either poll.

A report this morning said the Motor City Bowl was also interested in matching the Cougars against the MAC champion -- most likely Marshall. But that scenario apparently doesn't interest BYU.

Regardless, that could be bad news for Colorado State and Sonny Lubick, who are unlikely to receive a Las Vegas Bowl invite after making a fairly unimpressive showing both on and off the field in Saturday's 35-17 win over UNLV.

Although CSU claims to have close to 8,000 e-mails pledging to buy Las Vegas Bowl tickets if the Rams are picked, there was a small contingent of CSU fans at Saturday's win over UNLV, a game the Rebels actually led at halftime, 17-14. And Fresno State, which already knocked off the Rams, 44-13, earlier this season, has lobbied hard against a rematch with CSU here.

Tina Kunzer-Murphy, the managing director of the Las Vegas Bowl, said nothing was set in stone.

"There's no clear direction that we're heading," she said. "There isn't a plan A or a plan B. Once we've heard who the Liberty Bowl has chosen, we'll sit down and decide what we're going to do."

The Las Vegas Bowl plans to make an official announcement of its decision on Tuesday morning.