New deal may entice Pac-10

Steve Guiremand

Thursday, May 17, 2001 | 10:48 a.m.

The Las Vegas Bowl has a new owner in ESPN. And it could be on the verge of forming a valuable alliance with the Pac-10 Conference.

Barring a last minute change of heart -- or not producing enough bowl eligible teams -- the Pac-10's No. 6 team will be playing the No. 2 team from the Mountain West Conference in Las Vegas Bowl X on Dec. 20 at Sam Boyd Stadium.

"There have been discussions about sending a team (to the Las Vegas Bowl)," Jim Muldoon, assistant commissioner of the Pac-10 Conference, said Wednesday. "We frankly expect it to happen."

Muldoon said the Pac-10 Council, which includes school presidents, athletic directors and faculty representatives, will vote during its year-end meeting May 31-June 3 in San Diego on whether to send a sixth team to Las Vegas.

The Pac-10 currently is obligated to send its champion to the Rose Bowl/BCS while the Holiday Bowl gets second choice. The Sun Bowl then takes the No. 3 team while the fourth and fifth picks go to what once were the Christmas Day games in Hawaii, the Aloha and Oahu Bowls. Those two contests, however, have been moved to the mainland this year due to poor attendance and will be played at Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco and Safeco Field in Seattle.

Except for its Rose Bowl contract, which runs through the 2006 game, all the other Pac-10 bowl contracts expire after this season.

"I'm sure that's one of the reasons Las Vegas is interested in making a deal with us this year," Muldoon said. "They obviously want to establish a relationship with us that might evolve into something in the future."

But, the Las Vegas Bowl is gambling that the Pac-10 will even have six bowl eligible teams this year.

"About half of the time we do have that many teams eligible," Muldoon said. "The only team that we've sent to Las Vegas has been Oregon (in 1997) and they had a lot of favorable things to say about their experience there."

As for what will happen starting in 2002, Muldoon left the door open that the Las Vegas Bowl could be in the running to move up the Pac-10 bowl ladder.

"The Holiday Bowl has already offered to continue to take our No. 2 team," he said. "The Sun Bowl looks pretty solid at No. 3. But with the Hawaii games moving to the mainland, it remains to be seen how well they'll be received this year.

"This is probably an opportune time for Las Vegas to be involved in our bowl scenarios."

Officials from the Insight.com Bowl, which is played in Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, have also expressed strong interest in joining the Pac-10 bowl fold in 2002.

"I think it would be a plus for us to have a bowl-game tie-in with the Pac-10 Conference," Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson said.