BYU football: Poinsettia Bowl wants Cougars back in a couple of years

San Diego • The Cougars played in a bowl game in America's Finest City for the first time in 19 years on Thursday night.

If Poinsettia Bowl executive director Bruce Binkowski has his way, it won't take nearly that long to get BYU back to Qualcomm Stadium again.

Binkowski told The Salt Lake Tribune earlier this week that the Poinsettia Bowl would like to get BYU in a rotation so that the Cougars play here every third or fourth year, provided they are bowl-eligible.

"For example, we have had [Navy] three times in eight years," Binkowski said. "That's about every third year. If we could do something like that with BYU, I would be thrilled to do that."

The Cougars will play in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco next year if they are bowl-eligible, while the Poinsettia Bowl is contracted to get Army if that service academy wins six or more games.

Coach Bronco Mendenhall said Wednesday that a lot of bowls have reached out to BYU in the past year to potentially fill openings when contracts are up after the 2013 season, but did not specify which ones.

Obviously, BYU would love to be part of the Holiday Bowl rotation, because the payout is three times greater, but Binkowski said that isn't going to happen in the near future.

"I think at this point I would have to say strictly Poinsettia Bowl [for BYU], because certainly we will have a Pac-12/Big 12 conference tie-in with the Holiday Bowl," he said. "I really like the flexibility of having the opportunity to have some independents come through, but you never say never. With the way things are going, who knows? But at this point, it would be Poinsettia Bowl [for BYU]."

Briefly

BYU announced the signing Thursday of junior college transfer Trenton Trammell, a 6-foot, 190-pound cornerback from City College of San Francisco. Trammell will enroll in January and will have three years to play two. ... BYU players wore helmet decals featuring blue (boys), pink (girls) and yellow (faculty) to honor the victims killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings. Cougars assistant Nick Howell attended high school in Ogden with the parents of one of the victims, Emilie Parker.

drew@sltrib.com

Twitter: @drewjay