Las Vegas Bowl

I had the great pleasure of meeting Matt Bauman, BYU (10-2) LB, recently at a National Football Foundation breakfast honoring both the incoming Hall of Fame class and top student-athletes like Bauman. A three-year starter, Matt has one more meaningful football game to play, the Las Vegas Bowl against Oregon State (8-4), before going to business school. He is waiting to hear from Stanford and Harvard.

I enjoyed speaking to Bauman, who is intelligent yet humble. He is proud of his team's success during his time there, although he is a bit disappointed with how the season played out. So even though this is the program's fifth straight visit to the Las Vegas Bowl, they are hungry to prove to the nation that they are a top team.

Despite his obvious talents, however, I, for the life of me, cannot imagine him capable of stopping Beavers RB Jacquizz Rodgers and the rest of the speedy Beavers. But Bauman and the Cougars D have confounded the experts before, as they did to open this season when shutting down the explosive Oklahoma O. But Oklahoma's offensive line was not ready for that one, and the Sooners' overall offense was not sharp in the first half of the season. The Beavers, meanwhile, are as fine-tuned at season's end as usual, scoring 31, 48, 42 and 33 pts in their final four games. QB Sean Canfield(284-406/3103y) had a fine regular season and played very well in the bitter Civil War loss to Oregon. Although the Beavers were down after that one, they enter tonight on a five-game postseason win streak and should be fine.

Of course, as much as BYU will struggle trying to stop the OSU O, the Beavers D will have a difficult time stopping sr QB Max Hall (pictured in last season's Las Vegas Bowl loss to Arizona) and the BYU O. Like Oregon State, the Cougars feature an experienced sr QB, in Hall (256-379/3368y), a 1,000y rusher in Harvey Unga (184/1016y) and a talented receiving target in TE Dennis Pitta (57/784y), who needs only two receptions to became the all-time leader in that category for TEs with 218 for his career. A balanced, dynamic offense is a main reason the Cougars have won 10 or more games for four straight seasons, joining Boise State, Ohio State and Texas as the only FBS teams to accomplish that feat.

The first bowl match-up of top 25 teams should be a barn-burner. Having praised the Pac 10 before, I will pick them to get win no. 1 in this postseason.

Pick: Oregon State 37 BYU 34.