Las Vegas Bowl hits jackpot

ESPN’s Mark Schlabach ranked the Las Vegas Bowl as the seventh most intriguing bowl game this season, ahead of the Orange Bowl (which features No. 9 Georgia Tech against No. 10 Iowa), and just behind the Gator Bowl (which features the sentimental pairing of No. 16 West Virginia against Florida State in Bobby Bowden’s final game).

Out of 34 bowl games, seventh isn’t bad.You can read the full story right here.

Based on the rankings, only the Capital One Bowl between No. 12 LSU and No. 13 Penn State features a better non-BCS match-up than this year’s Las Vegas Bowl between No. 14 BYU and No. 18 Oregon State.Besides the similar rankings and vowel-consonant makeup of the mascots, the Cougars and Beavers match up about as evenly as possible when you compare the two teams’ statistics (national rank in parenthesis):

Rushing Offense
BYU – 148.17 (60)
OSU – 144.17 (64)

Passing Offense
BYU – 288.92 (12)
OSU – 275.25 (21)

Total Offense
BYU – 437.08 (18)
OSU – 419.42 (28)

Scoring Offense
BYU – 34.75 (12)
OSU – 32.42 (22)

Rushing Defense
BYU – 112.00 (23)
OSU – 87.67 (6)

Pass Defense
BYU – 219.08 (65)
OSU – 238.67 (87)

Total Defense
BYU – 331.08 (35)
OSU – 352.92 (50)

Scoring Defense
BYU – 21.67 (34)
OSU – 23.42 (51)