Las Vegas Bowl director sees moratorium helping bowl system
The NCAA is prohibiting the creation of new bowl games for the next three years after three teams with 5-7 records were needed to fill the record number of 40 bowls last season.
John Saccenti, the Las Vegas Bowl’s executive director, was lost on a back road in Florida on Monday when reached for comment about the report. He agrees with the NCAA’s decision, saying the bowl system has gotten a little lost as well.
“Personally, I think we got away a little bit from understanding what bowls are all about,” he said. “They’re supposed to be a reward for having a great season and give teams an experience in a different city.
“When some of the 5-7 teams made bowls, we knew the NCAA would get involved and would take a long hard look at it.”
Saccenti is in Florida for the Football Bowl Association’s annual meeting, scheduled from Wednesday to Friday in Ponte Vedra Beach. He said the bowl directors will discuss the issue on Thursday.
“A lot of things happening weren’t going to affect us directly,” he said, “but we’re certainly paying attention.”
The Las Vegas Bowl is entering the third year of a six-year contract with its conference partners, the Mountain West and Pac-12. Utah (10-3) held off Brigham Young (9-4) 35-28 in last year’s Las Vegas Bowl, which is the 16th-oldest of the 40 bowls and will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year.
The Las Vegas Bowl has its choice of teams from the Mountain West and the sixth selection from the Pac-12 (a provision in the contract allowed the bowl to pick BYU once in a four-year period).
“Our bowl is in a great spot,” Saccenti said. “Where we’re selecting with the Pac-12, we’re going to have a really good team and where we’re selecting from the Mountain West, we’ll have a really good team.”
The NCAA’s football oversight committee last week recommended a three-year moratorium on sanctioning new postseason games and it was approved by the Division I Council. The oversight committee started a task force to study the Bowl Subdivision postseason after there was not enough six-win, bowl-eligible teams last season to fill the 40 games.
The committee, led by Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, will deliver a full set of recommendations on reforming the postseason in June, including determining what should qualify as a deserving team and how a 5-7 team should be placed in a bowl, if necessary.
Three cities — Austin, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina — were in the process of trying to gain approval for new bowl games.
Nebraska, Minnesota and San Jose State were allowed to play in bowls last season because they had the highest Academic Progress Report scores among teams with 5-7 records. There were no additional restrictions placed on those teams and bowls were allowed to pick them according to their contracts with conferences.
That placed Nebraska of the Big Ten in the Fosters Farm Bowl in Santa Clara, California and Minnesota in the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit, while six- and seven-win teams from other conferences were sent to less-desirable bowls. Two such teams from the Mountain West, Colorado State (7-6) and UNR (7-6), played in the first Arizona Bowl in Tucson, drawing sharp criticism from Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson, who didn’t like the fact that two teams from the same conference were forced to play each other after getting passed over by other bowls in favor of 5-7 squads.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0354. Follow him on Twitter: @tdewey33
