Holiday Bowl may leave WAC on the outside

It appears there will be no Holiday for the Western Athletic Conference come the end of December.

The WAC, which has played in the Holiday Bowl since its inception in 1978, is on the outside looking in as the Big 12's third-place team will likely oppose the Pacific 10 Conference's runner-up Dec. 30 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego.

John Reid, executive director of the Holiday Bowl, said it will invite whichever team is ranked higher -- the Big 12's third-place team or the WAC champion. The Big 12 has five teams ranked in this week's Associated Press poll while the WAC has none.

"What we're trying to do is get the higher ranked team from the Big 12 or the WAC," Reid said.

Unless things change dramatically in the coming weeks, it means the WAC champion, which will be determined Dec. 5 at Sam Boyd Stadium, needs to find a place to play.

It's unlikely that the Las Vegas Bowl will want to bring the WAC champ back to town Dec. 19. So it may mean having the conference winner go to Louisiana to play Dec. 31 in the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, or to Hawaii on Christmas Day to play in either the Aloha Bowl or the Oahu Bowl. The latter is supposed to serve as a spot for the second- or third-place WAC team, or whichever team doesn't go to the Las Vegas Bowl.

WAC commissioner Karl Benson could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The Holiday Bowl, which has been negotiating with the Big 12 and the WAC since July to find an opponent for its Pac-10 team, is looking for a long-term agreement with the new league comprised of the eight breakaway WAC schools.

The highest-ranked member of the new conference would take the WAC's spot in the battle of the polls with the Big 12 starting in 1999.

"Our interest is making sure we have ties to the champion of the breakaway group," Reid said.

Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Bowl continues to wait for the new league to get its house in order before getting down to serious negotiations for 1999.

"We have time," said Rossi Ralenkotter, vice president of marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which oversees the Las Vegas Bowl.

"Right now, we're waiting for them to get their commissioner, name and headquarters in place. For the moment, our focus is really on this year's Las Vegas Bowl and looking at teams we want to consider inviting."

Ralenkotter did confirm the WAC will still be part of this year's game, but no agreement has been finalized on excluding the WAC from future Las Vegas Bowls.

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