Oakland Tribune: Las Vegas or Sun in cards for Cal?

Trip to El Paso would mean a bigger jackpot for Bears, but it's out of their hands
By Dave Newhouse, STAFF WRITER
For the third straight year, it's time for Cal to go bowling for dollars. Only which bowl, and for how much? Cal will find out Sunday when the final BCS ratings are announced. But it's down to the Sun Bowl and, most likely, the Las Vegas Bowl for the Golden Bears (7-4, 4-4 Pac-10). The difference on the bottom line: Cal would receive a $1,575,000 payout from the Friday, Dec.30, Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, and a $575,000 guarantee from the Thursday, Dec.22, Las Vegas Bowl.
"El Paso would love to have Cal," said Bernie Olivas, Sun Bowl executive director. "They bring an exciting football team, the kind you want in a bowl game — lots of points." "The beautiful thing about Cal," Tina Kunzer-Murphy, Las Vegas Bowl executive director, said, "besides being a great team, with a great coach (Jeff Tedford), and a great university, is that they don't play (during the regular season) in the Las Vegas area. I wish we could pull the trigger today." Nothing can be fired up until Sunday, although BYU already has accepted an invitation to play in the Las Vegas Bowl. Tom Holmoe, the head coach at Cal before Tedford, is the athletic director at BYU. The only way now that Cal doesn't play in Las Vegas would be if the BCS, for once, favors the Pac-10. If USC beats UCLA on Saturday, and Oregon earns a BCS at-large bid, then UCLA goes to the Dec.29 Holiday Bowl in San Diego, and Cal heads for El Paso to face a Big Ten team.
But folks in Las Vegas feel they have the bead on Cal. "The only way we don't get Cal," said Kunzer-Murphy, "is if the BCS chooses Oregon over Ohio State."
Most BCS prognostications favor Ohio State over Oregon, and even Notre Dame over Oregon. No wonder the Ducks' Mike Bellotti is pulling a Mack Brown and pleading for his team. A week ago, there were four bowl possibilities for Cal — the Sun, Las Vegas, Insight and Emerald. The Insight fell by the wayside when Arizona State rallied to beat Arizona last Friday, 23-20. The Sun Devils (6-5, 4-4) became bowl-eligible and the Dec.27 Insight Bowl in Phoenix locked them up.
The Dec.29 Emerald Bowl — which normally gets the sixth-place Pac-10 team — no longer remained a possibility for the Bears after Stanford lost to Notre Dame.
Although three teams finished in a fourth-place tie at 4-4 (Arizona State, Cal and Stanford), the Emerald Bowl would not get to snag the final pick from that pool because the Pac-10 did not have six bowl-eligible teams. The Cardinal fell one win short. Therefore, an Atlantic Coast Conference school — either Virginia, Georgia Tech or Boston College — will meet Utah in the Dec.29 game at SBC Park. Last year, Cal was victimized by Brown's campaigning. But it worked out for Brown as his Texas Longhorns made a last-gasp push over Cal in the BCS ratings to get the Rose Bowl bid. The Bears went to the Holiday Bowl, where they lost 45-31 to Texas Tech.