BYU's cry: 'Don't give us Liberty'
CNN/SI 10Nov99 S3
By Michael C. Lewis, Special to CNN/SI

The BYU Cougar football team is closing in on the first Mountain West Conference championship, giving it a return trip to the Liberty Bowl, formerly the bowl game for the Western Athletic Conference. But the Cougars aren't that excited about it because they think they deserve better. Unfortunately, the 14th ranked Cougars probably won't get anything better.

"I don't think anybody wants to go to the Liberty Bowl this year," said wide receiver Jonathan Pittman. "We all want to go higher than that. We're looking for a BCS standing. We're striving to be in the BCS standings. ... We are looking at the Liberty Bowl as more of a consolation prize more than, like, 'Oh, we're at the Liberty Bowl!' We're thinking higher than that."

In order to get into a major bowl game, the Cougars would need to be at least sixth in the Bowl Championship Series rankings. While the Cougars are expected to win their last two games, to make it into the top six, a half-dozen teams ahead of them in the rankings would have to collapse.

It is expected that BYU will either face Southern Mississippi or Louisville in the Liberty Bowl on December 31st. And some of the Cougars are facing the facts with a little maturity, "A lot of people have been saying we don't want to go to the Liberty Bowl," said quarterback Kevin Feterik. "That's wrong. We want to go to any bowl that will take us."