BYU plays key role in Las Vegas Bowl plans

In his second year as executive director of the Las Vegas Bowl, John Saccenti is showing he isn’t afraid to try new things.

He took the bold step of agreeing to let Brigham Young take the place of the Mountain West representative either this year or in 2019. Considering Sam Boyd Stadium is home to a Mountain West team, that’s not easy to pull off given there was little in it for the conference.

Saccenti also helped put together a game in 2021 at the stadium between BYU and Arizona, trying to capture some of the national attention other early-season neutral-site games have created.

BYU has a special place in this game, and that’s one reason Saccenti wanted to include the Cougars. The bowl was in danger of not surviving when the Cougars made the first of five consecutive appearances in 2005.

“When we invited BYU that first time and we sold the game out immediately, our game took a little bit of a turn,” Saccenti said. “We were trying to sell tickets, trying to create an event, and as soon as you got a sold-out event where people in this town couldn’t get a ticket, all of the sudden it changed the perception of the game.”

The decision to invite the Cougars to take the place of the Mountain West team was especially intriguing. Because UNLV plays in the Mountain West, it always appeared the conference would be part of the game, especially given the bowl’s importance to the league.

Unless a Mountain West team is chosen for one of the New Year’s Six bowls, as Boise State was last season, Las Vegas gets the first selection of the conference to compete against the sixth selection from the Pac-12 Conference.

But Saccenti said talks with the Mountain West went well, and an agreement was worked out in which the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas, could take a league representative the years BYU went to Las Vegas or the Hawaii Bowl.

Provided BYU is bowl eligible this season, the Cougars will play in Las Vegas or Honolulu this year. Whatever bowl doesn’t get them this year will be able to select BYU in 2019.

The selection process regarding the Cougars will be determined depending on how the season unfolds. Should Hawaii become bowl eligible, the Warriors probably would play in their home bowl and let BYU go to Las Vegas. If a ranked Mountain West team is available for Las Vegas over a BYU team that is 7-5 or 8-4, however, the Cougars could get sent to the islands.

The timing might work out better for them to play in Honolulu anyway. BYU’s basketball team will play in the Diamond Head Classic beginning Dec. 22, so the school could put together a package for fans to see both events.

The dates for the Las Vegas and Hawaii bowls have not been set. In recent years, however, Las Vegas has been played on the Saturday before Christmas and Hawaii on Christmas Eve.

As for arranging the neutral-site game between BYU and Arizona for Sept. 4, 2021, that was an opportunity to lure fans to Sam Boyd in the early season and bring more attention to the bowl. Neutral-site games played in Atlanta, Houston and Arlington, Texas, have become almost must-see events.

Saccenti would like to say the BYU-Arizona game is the beginning of an annual tradition, but he can’t make that promise.

The stadium capacity of 36,800 — which will drop by about 1,000 seats after the field is widened this summer — makes it difficult to invite big-name teams without charging exorbitant ticket prices.

“We can convince teams to come to Las Vegas, no problem,” Saccenti said. “People want to come play neutral-site games here. It’s a good fit for them.

“I don’t know if our market is ready to pay the per-ticket price based on a 36,000-seat stadium. So there are a couple of conversations we started with other schools and other conferences that we just had to get out of because the financials wouldn’t have worked, but we’re still exploring that.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow him on Twitter: @markanderson65.