Las Vegas Bowl gets tier that it deserves

Six weeks. Six months. Doesn't matter. When entering into contract negotiations for securing your lot in life as a college football bowl game, specific facts always determine your fate.

The biggest one -- be careful not to faint -- being money. You are what you are, which means you are what your bank account and stadium size suggests.

Tina Kunzer-Murphy since January has been tinkering with this and modifying that and hustling through her daily routine with a phone attached to her ear.

This is what executive directors of bowl games do when conference affiliation contracts are nearly expired. They become insomniacs.

But her bowl matchup was always going to exist within a certain tier, and the one Kunzer-Murphy bargained for is about as good as she could have hoped.

She has secured a game between the No. 1 choice from the Mountain West Conference and a fifth selection from the Pac-10 through 2013. It's a conclusion that makes sense for what now is called the MAACO Bowl Las Vegas sponsored by Brigham Young University.

(OK, so the part about BYU isn't true yet, but if the Cougars are invited here a fifth straight season, I'm personally going to scan the family tree of each selection committee member for any mention of a Joseph Smith.)

"I felt being able to stay with the (Mountain West and Pac-10) was a coup," she said. "Those were some hard-fought negotiations. People can say, 'It's just the fifth selection,' but it's from a Bowl Championship Series conference, and the Pac-10 is great for us. Look at the last eight years of our game -- four games have been won by the Mountain West and four by the Pac-10.

"We just need to have a good game. The one thing I know is that we're going to have a bowl game here the next five years."

It's the most significant fact given the economy. Not all cities are as fortunate.

Las Vegas had been rotating with the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco for the fourth and fifth pick out of the Pac-10. But those here wanted to make No. 4 permanent. They annually wanted to pick from a deeper pool of candidates. They wanted an upgrade.

But bowls are like everything else when it comes to collegiate athletics now, meaning you either stand on the side of the field with the haves or wallow on the other with the have-nots.

Bowls able to afford bigger payouts and fill more seats played a little havoc with the status quo these last six months, and when the final number was crunched and deal made, the Pac-10 bowl lineup had a different look beginning next year:

In order, the top five selections in 2010 reportedly will go to the Rose (BCS), Alamo, Holiday, Sun and Las Vegas bowls.

Kunzer-Murphy knows the hand she can play in such matters. While others are willing to pay several million dollars to participating teams as third and fourth selections, she can offer $1.1 million to each next year.

While others stage games in massive, expansive venues, she has a Sam Boyd Stadium not suited for 40,000 but has for a bowl game featured exhaustingly long lines to the restroom, broken pipes and lights that have gone out.

"Financially, this (bowl arrangement) is as good as it gets for us, and we are sort of landlocked when it comes to the (facility)," Kunzer-Murphy said. "These negotiations were by far the toughest I've had in (10 years as executive director). It's good to know where you fit and where you are and what you have to do to make things happen."

She also is interested in moving her game past Christmas in 2010 and beyond, to a date that falls between the 26th and 29th. This year's game is Dec. 22.

She couldn't go past the 29th, given you then are into the New Year's Eve celebration in Las Vegas, when room rates rise past Neptune and staging a bowl game here would liken that of an old girlfriend crashing a blind date for bad timing.

"It's time we shake things up some and move to a little later date," Kunzer-Murphy said. "(Before Christmas), you have teams in finals and coaches have had to miss recruiting days. Teams have had less than 10 days to prepare.

"We'll get together with our television partners and host hotels and see what date works for everyone. It's time. We need to reinvent ourselves every couple years so we don't go stale."

That won't happen. After all, there seems to be a new opponent for BYU each year.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He also can be heard weeknights from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on "The Sports Scribes" on KDWN-AM (720) and www.infernosportsradio.com.