Mountain West lands New Orleans bowl spot

[Harry]

The Mountain West Conference will send a team to the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl this season, giving the conference six bowl affiliations, the conference and bowl game announced Monday.

The New Orleans Bowl on Monday announced a contract extension with the Sun Belt and Conference USA for this six-year bowl cycle, but a Mountain West team will take the place of the C-USA team this year, when the game is played at 8 a.m. (Pacific time) on Dec. 20 at the Mercedez-Benz Superdome. It will be televised by ESPN.

Javan Hedlund, a spokesman for the MWC, said there are talks for the MWC to get a spot in three of those six years, but nothing has been finalized yet. He said there are "several moving parts" to the agreement.

Colorado State took part in the inaugural New Orleans Bowl in 2001, and San Diego State did so in 2011.

Read more: http://www.rgj.com/story/sports/college/nevada/2014/07/14/mountain-west-send-team-new-orleans-bowl/12653461/

[emmitt01]

The game will be at 8am??

[VideoEagle]

The game will be at 8am??

Pacific time. This is one of the problems with Western time zone conferences having football games in Central and Eastern time zones.

[UNTFan23]

The game will be at 8am??

8 AM Pacific which is 10 AM Central/11 AM Eastern. That's still very early.

[Ben Gooding]

So CUSA just got the boot out of this bowl tie?

[VideoEagle]

So CUSA just got the boot out of this bowl tie?

Not according to the article. "The New Orleans Bowl on Monday announced a contract extension with the Sun Belt and Conference USA for this six-year bowl cycle, but a Mountain West team will take the place of the C-USA team this year." I'm not sure, but I suspect CUSA has another bowl tie in that pairs with the Sunbelt this year.

[Harry]

I sense that the Mountain West is a strong ally of CUSA. Thompson and Banowsky are tight. We saw an indication of their friendship when UNLV was placed in the HOD bowl and the swapped MTSU to the Fort Worth Armed Services one.