[Tommy]

By Vegas Experts Staff.

Last season, Jeff Tedford and the Cal followers were all lobbying hard for the 10-1 Bears to get a BCS bid, especially with that only loss a 23-17 defeat to USC. The boys from the BCS were smart as the Bears were snubbed and sent to the Holiday Bowl. Cal should have stayed home as they were embarrassed by Texas Tech, losing 45-31 as lofty 11-point favorites.

This year the Bears get to play in the lowly Las Vegas Bowl. The good news is that they’ll get to have a good time partying on the Vegas strip. Let’s just hope they don’t spend too much time in the casinos or strip clubs!

Cal started the season on a roll winning five straight. However, their backers weren’t that pleased as they couldn’t beat up the weak competition and were only 2-2 ATS. One of their opening games was an unlined battle against Sacramento State. How many of you actually knew that Sacramento State had a football team?

The Bears winning streak came to a halt when they went to UCLA and were knocked off by the undefeated Bruins 47-40, failing as 1.5-point road favorites. There were earlier signs that this Cal team wasn’t that good, but after this loss to what most thought was a good UCLA team, there was still hope that Cal would finish strong. Those hopes were dashed the following week when they lost at home to Oregon State, in a game that the bookmakers had them as two touchdown favorites.

Cal went on to split their final four games, wins over Washington State and Stanford, and losses to USC and Oregon. The Golden Bears alumni are still trying to pay off the books as Cal went 3-7 ATS on the season, including losing to the number in five of the last six. Thank god they covered in their season ending game at Stanford.

This will be California’s third straight bowl game. We mentioned last year’s debacle, but the year before they upset Virginia Tech. The question here is which Cal team will show up?

New coach Bronco Mendenhall, a long time BYU assistant, guided the Cougars to a 6-5 season. Not great, but at least they’ll be playing in a bowl game.

Bronco has BYU back on track. After many successful seasons under Lavell Edwards, BYU was guided by Gary Crowton for four seasons. The first year (2001 season) under Crowton the Cougars were 12-2. However it went all down hill after that. Over the next three seasons the Cougars had losing records and no bowl appearances.

It didn’t look good early on as the Cougars lost three of the first four with the only win in a non-lined game versus E. Illinois. BYU backers were really upset as the Cougars started out at 0-3 ATS.

The game that turned their season around was in week five they went into New Mexico and beat the Lobos 27-24 as 7.5-point underdogs. They defeated Colorado State next, then went into South Bend and were beat up by Notre Dame. They rebounded strong after losing to the Irish with three straight wins and covers. The last of those three was a 35-21 win at Wyoming to become bowl eligible. Unfortunately they spent too much time celebrating as they lost the season finale at home to Utah 41-34, not coming close to covering as 10-point home favorites.

The Sportsbooks look for a relatively close game as California is a 6-point favorite. That’s slightly down from a 6.5-point opening number. They are expecting a high scoring game as the total is 61 points. Regarding the total, BYU went 6-4 over on the season, while Cal was an under team going below the number seven out of ten times.

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