Another week of college football has passed, so now it is time to project where Air Force and the rest of the Mountain West will go bowling this year. The Mountain West currently has four bowl-eligible teams in Air Force, San Diego State, TCU and Utah; with BYU sitting at five wins and presumably should get to six when they face 1-9 New Mexico this weekend. This week's projections are a little difficult to project because Utah is on a slide while BYU is on the rise and the Las Vegas Bowl gets first pick and not first place team.
BYU has been able to sell out the Las Vegas Bowl for the past five years, but if BYU ends up with a 6-6 with a win over New Mexico and a loss to Utah. While the Utes could go either go 9-3 or 10-2 so it would seem unlikely that the Las Vegas Bowl would want the best team possibly, and ticket sales would not hurt because this would be Utah's first Las Vegas Bowl since they beat USC in 2001 while BYU has been there the past five seasons.
TCU provides another challenge since they are currently in the third spot and as of now are guaranteed an automatic BCS bid for being the highest non-AQ team, but the consensus is that the Boise State Broncos will pass them since the Broncos have a tougher schedule then TCU.
So, here we go with the bowl projections and these are based on how the season will play out and not how the teams are sitting in the standings today. The Mountain West will not have enough teams so the Armed Forces Bowl will not have a Mountain West team.
Sugar Bowl
TCU Horned Frogs vs. LSU Tigers
Las Vegas Bowl
Utah Utes vs. Toledo Rockets*
Poinsettia Bowl
San Diego State Aztecs vs. Navy
Independence Bowl
Air Force Falcons vs. Clemson Tigers
New Mexico Bowl
BYU Cougars vs. Miami (OH) Red Hawks*
The starred teams are replacements since the Pac-10 and WAC are not expected to have enough bowl-eligible teams. The Las Vegas Bowl is the most difficult of all to figure out because the Pac-10 is most likely to not have enough teams and the projections across the web range from the most likely being a MAC team, Tennessee or Texas Tech.