MWC Bowls, 2010 Week Thirteen

Well, this weekend pretty well set the MWC bowl teams, at least from the MWC side.

TCU will go to a BCS game.
Utah will go to Vegas.
San Diego State will go to the Poinsettia.
Air Force will go to the Independence.
BYU will go to the Armed Forces.
The MWC will not fill its New Mexico Bowl slot.

The possible opponents, in most cases, are starting to settle finally, with just a few yet to be decided.
If TCU goes to the Rose Bowl, it will be against Wisconsin.  If it goes to the National Championship game, I think that would mean Auburn lost and they play Oregon.  They could win against any of those 3 potential opponents, and wouldn't get blown out by any of them (except maybe Oregon) like some pundits would tell you.
Utah would normally play a Pac 10 team in Vegas, but the Vegas Bowl is too far down the list and the Pac 10 is short of teams to qualify.  They will likely get a mid-level MAC team.  The MAC has 6 bowl-eligible teams and only 3 bowl tie-ins.  Vegas will likely get one of the three 8-4 teams (Ohio, Temple, or Toledo).  Utah should win, if they are motivated enough against such a crummy opponent.  Their bowl streak says enough that they will be motivated.
San Diego State will play Navy in the Poinsettia Bowl.  They beat a better Air Force team on the same field already this season, so they could beat Navy.
Air Force will draw one of the 6-6 ACC teams, Clemson or Georgia Tech.  I would be more interested in Georgia Tech to watch the option offenses square off, but that might be a little too boring (and the game over too quickly) for the bowl game to select that matchup.  Clemson played in the Independence once in 1985.  Georgia Tech has never played in the Shreveport, LA bowl game.  Air Force would have a good chance against either.
BYU will play either SMU or UCF.  The winner of the Conference USA game is tied to the Liberty Bowl.  The loser would likely be Armed Forces Bowl-bound.  Traditional wisdom would say that UCF will beat SMU in the C-USA championship (though SMU has won 2 in a row and 3 out of 4).  If that is the case, BYU-SMU would rematch exactly 30 years after "The Miracle Bowl."  While the game would be played at SMU's home stadium, BYU could beat them given the way they have performed of late.  BYU does host UCF next season, so that would be a nice preview of that game!  Either way, BYU could win.
The New Mexico Bowl will likely get one of the other 8-4 MAC teams to face off against Fresno State, the 4th place WAC team.

The MWC would have a great shot to go 5-0 in their bowl games.  Anything less than 3-2 would be a major disappointment.  I would predict, without knowing the matchups with any certainty, that they will be 4-1, but I'll get a bit more definitive once I see the actual matchups (and once we know if Hoke will coach SDSU in their bowl game or not), instead of my predicted ones.

Next year, the MWC will only have 8 teams, 4 of which are CSU, New Mexico, UNLV, and Wyoming.  If they send a team to a BCS game, they will only have enough teams for 3 of their 5 slots: both the Armed Forces and New Mexico slots will go unfilled.