Poinsettia Bowl – December 29

By Joe Naiman

The addition of a second college football bowl game for San Diego — one that will include a team from the Mountain West Conference — is likely to boost chances for more local athletes to play post-season.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association on April 19 sanctioned another bowl game for San Diego.

“A lot of local kids go to the Mountain West Conference schools, and it will give them a chance to play in a hometown bowl game,” said Bruce Binkowski, executive director of the nonprofit organization known as the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl.

The entity will organize both the Holiday Bowl, which has been in existence since 1978, and the Poinsettia Bowl, whose name was announced April 27.

The Holiday Bowl pits a PAC-10 conference team against a Big 12 team. The Poinsettia Bowl, which will be called the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl for at least the first two years, will feature a Mountain West Conference school against an at-large team. This year, it will be played Dec. 29.

“More local kids have a chance to play in the bowl game in the city they grew up in, and I think that’s awesome,” Binkowski said.

The Mountain West Conference includes San Diego State University, so many recruits will have a chance to see other MWC teams who play in San Diego.

The Mountain West Conference was created when the Western Athletic Conference was split. In 1978, San Diego State University joined the Western Athletic Conference; that year, the University of Arizona and Arizona State University went from the WAC to what became known as the PAC-10 after the addition of those two schools.

Before 1978, the WAC champion played in the Fiesta Bowl at the home stadium of Arizona State University in Tempe. Without any WAC schools in Arizona, the new Holiday Bowl replaced the Fiesta Bowl as the automatic invitation for the WAC champion.

The NCAA license for the Poinsettia Bowl does not include any specific conference standings designation for the MWC team.

“We’re not looking at the champion for the first year. We're just looking at a team,” Binkowski said.

The MWC champion currently receives an automatic invitation to the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tenn., although in 2004, MWC champion Utah received an at-large Bowl Championship Series bid.

Holiday Bowl festivities include player visits to the San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld San Diego and an aircraft carrier, along with a kickoff luncheon the day before the game. Pre-game activities for the Poinsettia Bowl are in the planning stages. “We will have similar activities,” Binkowski said. “We’re not going to mirror what we have with the Holiday Bowl.”

Local players who have returned to San Diego to play in the Holiday Bowl have noted that although they previously visited the zoo and SeaWorld, they have not done so with their teammates.