MOUNTAIN WEST JUST BOWLED OVER

Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.

This is the first season the Mountain West Conference is sending five teams to college football bowl games, which can mean one of two things:

A) There are entirely too many bowls or

B) The Mountain West is morphing into the Little Conference That Could after being branded as a Little Conference That Usually Can't.

In case you can't check for the mtn., the conference's hard-to-find regional broadcast network, in your local listings or can't read the fine print on the scoreboard page of the sports section, you might be surprised to learn that more than half of the Mountain West membership is going bowling this year.

In fact, the first bowl game of the season will feature a Mountain West team when Utah lines up against Navy on Thursday in the Poinsettia Bowl.

On Saturday, two Mountain West teams will be in action - New Mexico hosts Nevada-Reno in the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque and conference champ Brigham Young faces UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl at sold-out Sam Boyd Stadium.

On Dec. 28, it'll be TCU vs. Houston in the Texas Bowl before resurgent Air Force rings out the old year against California in the Armed Forces Bowl.

Naturally, those associated with the Mountain West think all those bowl invitations are due more to quality (of depth in the conference) than quantity (of bowl games).

"Now we've got to line up and beat these people," said Bret Gilliland, the Mountain West's deputy commissioner.

With its teams scattered across the bowl calendar like chocolate sprinkles on a cupcake, this might be the best opportunity for the Mountain West to boost its credibility since Urban Meyer's Utah team destroyed Pitt in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, a Bowl Championship Series production.

BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall said it's important that MWC teams don't stub their toe on national TV. Four of the five games featuring league teams will be shown on ESPN, which reaches millions more viewers than the mtn.

"There's been a lot of (controversy) about our TV package," Mendenhall said. "But that's not relevant now."