Utah Declares Its Major

SALT LAKE CITY —  The day started with snowflakes dropping from the sky and ended with flying tortillas.

Only Utah could have made that happen.

Six years after the bowl championship series was created, No. 5 Utah almost certainly became the first team from a non-BCS conference to earn a major-bowl bid Saturday night when it defeated Brigham Young, 52-21, before a crowd of 45,326 at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Utah improved to 11-0 with the historic victory and is likely headed to the Jan. 1 Fiesta Bowl against an opponent yet to be determined.

“We are gonna get our shot to go to the BCS and play with the big boys,” Utah quarterback Alex Smith said.

Never mind that small details still have to be worked out and that the behind-the-scenes action Saturday night was almost as good as Utah’s high-powered offense -- especially when you tossed in the prospect of Utah Coach Urban Meyer possibly leaving the school to coach at Florida.

“We’re going to talk about the University of Utah tonight,” Meyer said.

There was never much doubt Utah would take care of on-field business against BYU (5-6), although it was only a 21-14 game at halftime.

The Utes, though, sealed their BCS coronation with a 31-point second-half outburst.

“We didn’t let the BCS dictate how we played,” senior safety Morgan Scalley said. “We did a good job living in a cave the last 11 weeks.”

As the game drew to a close and fans started to surround the field with chants of “BCS! BCS!” power brokers in multicolored bowl jackets prowled in the background to settle the legal issues that could have crushed Utah’s BCS dreams.

As Mountain West Conference champion, Utah is contractually bound to play in the Liberty Bowl.

The BCS, however, had independently crafted bylaws in which a non-BCS team would earn an automatic bid to a major bowl if it finished No. 6 or better in the BCS standings.

Up until game time, Liberty Bowl Executive Director Steve Ehrhart would not say whether he was going to release Utah to the BCS.

Afterward, though, Ehrhart capitulated and said he could not deny Utah its historic chance at a $14-million BCS game.

In reality, given the frenzy, there was no way Ehrhart could have marched to the field and pointed to the fine print of his Liberty Bowl contract with the Mountain West Conference.

In a postgame news conference, Ehrhart announced he was freeing Utah play in a BCS game even though he wasn’t thrilled to do it.

“Believe me, it was close,” Ehrhart said of his decision.

Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said, “An agreement is in place, I don’t want to get into the particulars.”

A best-case scenario for the Liberty Bowl would be for Western Athletic Conference champion Boise State to finish unbeaten and replace Utah in an attractive matchup against No. 8 Louisville.

This would require the WAC’s releasing Boise State and being financially compensated.

Thompson said the Mountain West’s deal with the Liberty Bowl had nothing to do with Boise State.

Nothing in the BCS will be official until all games are played and the final BCS standings are released on Dec. 5.

The Utes started the day at No. 6 in the BCS and basically became a lock to stay there after No. 7 Michigan, the only team with a chance of knocking Utah out, lost to Ohio State.

If California beats Southern Mississippi on Dec. 4, the Golden Bears probably will clinch the other BCS at-large berth and play in the Rose Bowl while Utah is likely bound for Tempe, Ariz. -- although the Sugar Bowl could take Utah in certain scenarios.

Fiesta Bowl officials have been scouting Utah all season knowing there was a chance the Utes would drop into their game.

Other “coalition” teams have made runs at the BCS in the last six years but fallen short -- which prompted protests from non-BCS conferences and the threat of litigation.

Tulane finished undefeated in 1998 but finished only 10th in the BCS standings. Marshall finished 12th in 1999.

John Junker, the Fiesta Bowl’s executive director, said Utah was “the most credible team to come out of that group.”

Utah’s offense proved again why it is neither BCS nor non-BCS but, rather, just plain potent. Dating to last year’s Liberty Bowl, Utah has won 12 straight games by 10 points or more.

Smith, Utah’s senior quarterback and a Heisman Trophy candidate, did not have his best game Saturday, completing 16 of 24 passes with one touchdown and two interceptions.

But his “un-Alex-like” effort, according to Meyer, was lost in the euphoria of Utah’s concluding its best regular season since the 1941 team finished 6-0-2.