BYU appears headed to the inaugural Miami Beach Bowl in December

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

It appears that the BYU football team will be spending a week in December in Miami. ESPN's Brett McMurphy reported Monday morning via Twitter that BYU will play in the inaugural Miami Beach Bowl in December at Marlins Park against a team from the American Athletic Conference. The AAC announced the creation of the Miami Beach Bowl last October and that it will own and administer the game. Exact date, time and TV plans have not been released. Chuck Sullivan, director of communications for the AAC, told me this morning after the news broke than he could "neither confirm nor deny" that BYU has been invited to play in the bowl if it is bowl-eligible in 2014. Sullivan said that no announcement is planned for today. However, he did not rule out the possibility that an announcement could be made in the next day or two. Coincidentally, it was snowing along the Wasatch Front, and in Provo, when McMurphy broke the news. The average temperature in Miami in December is 76 degrees. Sullivan said there is no pecking order for AAC teams and the five bowls those teams have tie-ins with, meaning that it could be the first-place team, or the fifth-place team, or any team in between, that serves as the host team for the bowl. BYU is scheduled to play three teams from the AAC in the regular season: UConn, Houston and Central Florida. Most likely, conference officials will do all they can to avoid a rematch in the bowl.