Aztecs Still Eligible for Holiday Berth : College football: Tie with BYU keeps door to bowl bid narrowly open.

Minutes after No. 23 Brigham Young and San Diego State had played to an improbable 52-52 tie in what figured to be the Western Athletic Conference’s championship game Saturday night, Holiday Bowl officials visited the BYU locker room and extended an official invitation.

President Morris Sievert made a short speech, BYU Coach LaVell Edwards accepted on behalf of his team, and the Cougars celebrated by dumping orange juice on each other and whooping.

One day later, the WAC issued a hasty press release: Not so fast.

After taking a magnifying glass to its convoluted tie-breaking procedures, WAC officials determined that, although it is highly unlikely, BYU still could lose the Holiday Bowl berth to SDSU.

“I was surprised after the game when (Holiday Bowl officials) told us we were in,” said BYU Coach LaVell Edwards, who apparently was the only person to realize Saturday’s tie didn’t guarantee the Cougars a Holiday Bowl position. “I kept asking them, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’ They assured me they were. I thought we had to either beat or tie Utah (Saturday).”

Add the premature Holiday Bowl invitation as just one more item to a wild, WAC-y night that will not soon be forgotten.

It was the highest-scoring game in NCAA history to end in a tie, surpassing the 48-48 deadlock involving San Jose State and Utah State on Sept. 8, 1979.

The two teams combined for 1,462 yards total offense, 1,167 passing yards and 67 first downs; SDSU averaged 8.8 yards per play and BYU averaged 8.6; SDSU sophomore quarterback David Lowery set a school record with 568 yards passing. The SDSU defense allowed a school record 599 yards passing.

It is the second consecutive season in which the SDSU defense has allowed BYU quarterback Ty Detmer to surpass an Aztec record. Last season, Detmer passed for 514 yards during a 62-34 BYU victory. The 514 passing yards were the most ever allowed by an Aztec defense until Saturday.

“I kept reminding myself going home that we didn’t win,” Edwards said. “We tied.”

But despite the tears shed by Lowery on the SDSU sideline immediately following the game, it turns out that the Aztecs (8-2-1, 6-1-1) are not yet officially eliminated from the Holiday Bowl. If BYU (7-3-1, 6-0-1) loses at home to Utah Saturday, and if Air Force (8-3, 5-2) loses at Hawaii Saturday, SDSU and BYU will tie for first.

And then WAC tie-breaking procedures are:

--Head to head competition. BYU and SDSU tied.

--How the teams fared against the rest of the conference, in order of final standing. This is where it gets tricky. Although Air Force and Utah would be tied for third, WAC procedure dictates that there is no tie-breaker for any place other than first, so instead of comparing themselves against Air Force, which defeated Utah, BYU and SDSU would compare how they did against both Air Force and Utah.

--Since BYU defeated Air Force and would have lost to Utah in this scenario, and since SDSU defeated Utah but lost to Air Force, the two would remain tied.

--If it gets this far, the WAC dictates that the Holiday Bowl bid go to the team that has appeared in the game less recently. BYU was there last season, SDSU has not been to the game since 1976. So the Aztecs would go.

In a scenario nearly as hard to believe as the game itself, until Joe Kearney, WAC commissioner, and Jeff Hurd, WAC associate commissioner, double-checked all of the tie-breaker procedures Sunday morning, everyone involved thought the tie clinched the title for BYU.

“Late (Saturday) night, I called the WAC people and they told me it was BYU,” said Bruce Binkowski, Holiday Bowl media relations director. “BYU officials said they had checked with the conference office and the conference had it that way. (The Cougars) were under the impression they were conference champions. They were really fired up.”

Said Hurd: “Unfortunately, most people interpreted it this way--myself included.”

Edwards said he has never seen anything like the game or the bowl mix-up.

“Not really,” he said. “I haven’t talked to the kids yet. I’m sure it will be a disappointment for them. They were excited when they found out they were going to the Holiday Bowl.”

Regarding the game, Edwards said: “I have never been involved in anything like that before. All those home runs they threw. It was like pitching a five-hitter but all five hits were home runs.”

SDSU threw touchdown passes of 75, 80, 79 and 47 yards.

It was a game the Aztecs should have won. They blew a 28-point lead, 45-17, in the game’s final 21:06.

BYU scored the tying touchdown with 30 seconds to play, and Edwards elected to go for the tie. Back-up kicker Keith Lever’s conversion was good.

Edwards said he had planned before the game to go for the tie if the situation occurred.

“I didn’t want to run the risk (of losing),” Edwards said. “If we tie, all we have to do is beat or tie Utah to be champions. If we go for two and miss, there’s no tomorrow. There’s no other option.”

SDSU Coach Al Luginbill, who went for a two-point conversion near the end of a 52-51 loss at Wyoming a year ago, said he didn’t blame Edwards for going for the tie.

“Obviously, we would have liked to have had a chance to defend (a two-point conversion),” Luginbill said. “But if you put yourself in LaVell’s situation, you’ve got to do what is best to get you to your ultimate goal. I’m not going to be critical of it.”

So the WAC champion will go to the Holiday Bowl and the runner-up will play Tulsa in the Freedom Bowl. But it will take a week longer than expected to determine which school goes where.

“I’ll tell you what,” Luginbill said. “(Saturday) night I didn’t sleep too good, but I’m fired up and ready to go today. When you sit down and get away from it--and that’s what I needed, to get away from it--I’m not going to let what happened (Saturday) night taint our year.”

Luginbill said he was up all night Saturday and realized in the wee hours that the Aztecs still may have an outside chance at the Holiday Bowl. Regardless of what happens, he said, his team will be ready for the rest of the year.

“We have one of the greatest opportunities ever put to a team--we get to play the No. 1 football team in the country (at Miami Nov. 30),” he said. “Also, we can reach our original goal--winning a bowl game. To win, you have to get there, and we’re going to be in a bowl game.”

Luginbill couldn’t praise Lowery’s performance enough.

“What can you say?” he said. “He’s the standard-bearer for our conference now with Ty leaving. There’s no other way to describe it.”

An hour after Saturday’s game was finished, when only a few players were left in the Aztec locker room, linebacker Lou Foster went around the locker room hugging the two or three other players who were left.

He approached Patrick Rowe and squeezed.

“You all right?” Foster asked.

The Aztecs were not all right. But Sunday was a new day, the first day of the rest of their season.

“You pick up and go on,” Luginbill said. “That’s what I told our young men (Saturday) night. I was very adamant. You can make excuses and blame others, but let’s be men and go forward.

“The sun is going to come up tomorrow. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re in the wrong locker room. Don’t be surprised if we go to Miami and play lights-out football.”

Aztec Notes

SDSU running back Marshall Faulk, who had 118 yards rushing and 116 receiving and scored four touchdowns before leaving with a bruised rib cage early in the fourth quarter, is OK, according to SDSU Coach Al Luginbill. Receiver Patrick Rowe, who left late in the third quarter with what then was called a sprained ankle, has what SDSU thinks is a bone bruise on the side of his left shin. X-rays were negative, and Luginbill said Rowe is day-to-day. . . . Luginbill is giving the Aztecs today and tomorrow off before reconvening Wednesday to begin preparing for Miami. . . . “I do want to thank the city of San Diego for the outpouring of support,” Luginbill said.