Yes, BYU had College Football Playoff hopes, but Cougars won't begrudge bowl-game invite

PROVO — The Pop-Tarts Bowl may have found a perfect match with No. 12 BYU and head coach Kalani Sitake, who is as confident in his love of food as he is about his team's chances at success during the past two years and a 22-4 run.

That is to say, the former BYU fullback isn't afraid to give a food take — and he didn't shy away from offering one for the Cougars' latest bowl game and their mega-brand of toaster pastries.

"I haven't met a Pop-Tart flavor I don't like," he said Sunday evening by video conference. "But I will say this: I'm pretty easy. Strawberry is always the one to go to, because I think that is the one everybody tries first. So I like strawberry."

Sitake added "Wild Berry," cherry and cookies and cream to the list — just as long as they're all frosted, he noted.

The Dec. 27 bowl game at Camping World Stadium in Orlando will be the eighth in 10 years under Sitake, all of them with different title sponsors and in different states. BYU's 42 bowl appearances from the 1974 Fiesta Bowl to last year's Alamo Bowl are the 24th-most among FBS teams.

But that's the thing about the Cougars — they'll go anywhere for the postseason, even one that ends short of the aspired College Football Playoff after a double-digit win season for a second consecutive year.

That's not always the case.

No. 22 Georgia Tech (9-3) is at least the second opponent that was attempted to square away for BYU in Orlando, after the Florida Citrus Sports that runs the game tried to add No. 11 Notre Dame into what many on the college football internet refer to as "the people's national championship" that refuses to take itself too seriously.

The matchup would've featured two of the top religious school in the country in a bowl game and the first two teams left out of the 12-team playoff. It certainly would have drawn interest, if not eyeballs and television ratings — which is the main objective of non-playoff bowl games in modern college football.

But the Fighting Irish (10-2) opted out of a bowl game Sunday after being left out of the CFP, a surprise move by many after Miami (10-2) was added for the first time in the current selection committee's rankings.

Enter Georgia Tech, which head coach Brent Key estimated found out "about 50 minutes before" he spoke during a virtual news conference Sunday night where his team would be playing in the postseason.

"This is a huge, huge game for us," Key said. "Bowl games are meant to be a reward for the players and the team and the staff, the coaches. But at the same time, we have one mission, and that's to go to Orlando to win a football game, bottom line."

The Yellow Jackets are led by a dual-threat quarterback in Haynes King and coached by an alum of the program in Key who is 27-19 with three bowl appearances in four years with the Ramblin' Wreck.

Sound familiar?

"I see a lot of things in their program very similar to ours," Sitake said. "I know that they are tough and they play really hard. They are not afraid to run their quarterback as well. A well-balanced team, well-coached.

"You look at what they do fundamentally well," he added, "it is everything."

The bowl season will go on without Notre Dame, as unfortunate as the Irish's decision to pull out of a 13th game may be. Bowl games have always been a consolation prize, a celebration of college football made for television inventory and a chance for some fans to take a holiday vacation.

But for the Cougars, another chance to play is welcome, if for no other reason than the Pop-Tarts Bowl also offers a way to wrap up a season with something that doesn't include a 34-7 loss to No. 4 Texas Tech in the Big 12 championship game.

"The goal was to create as many opportunities to play together as possible," said Sitake, who added his team will utilize each bowl practice provided to them before the game, "so we created one more this year than we had last year. We got to the (Big 12) championship game, and that was a cool experience — even though it didn't work out the way we wanted it to.

"We've got to be thankful for that opportunity and look forward to trying to do everything we can to get back to that game again next year. Part of that is being able to bowl prep and to develop our young guys and develop our depth."

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