The 2010 Maaco Bowl Las Vegas was an

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

-sanctioned

Division I FBS The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). A ...

post-season college football

bowl game In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivi ...

. The game was played Wednesday, December 22, 2010, at 5 p.m. PST at 40,000-seat

Sam Boyd Stadium Sam Boyd Stadium (formerly the Las Vegas Silver Bowl) is a football stadium in the western United States, located in Whitney, Nevada, an unincorporated community in the Las Vegas Valley. It honors Sam Boyd (1910–1993), a major figure in the hot ...

near

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

, broadcast on

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

. The game featured

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

against Boise State.

Teams

Utah Utes

Utah was one of the teams participating in the 2010 bowl. The Utes entered the game with the longest current bowl winning streak at nine games and had never lost a bowl game under current head coach Kyle Whittingham. Utah entered the game with a 10–2 overall record and a #19 ranking in the BCS poll. The Utes had played in the Las Vegas bowl twice before, defeating

Fresno State California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) is a public university in Fresno, California. It is one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. The university had a fall 2020 enrollment of 25,341 students. It offers bachelo ...

17–16 in

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

and beating USC 10–6 in 2001. The 1999 victory over Fresno State started the nine game bowl winning streak.

Boise State Broncos

Boise State was invited to the bowl after not enough Pac-10 teams were bowl-eligible to meet their contractual requirements. The #10 (BCS) Broncos entered the game with an 11–1 record, their only loss coming at Nevada on November 26; BSU split the WAC title with Nevada and Hawai'i. Before the Nevada game, they were in line for a possible at-large selection to a BCS bowl game. Even at 11-1, they were still eligible as an at-large selection but were not taken. The 2010 game marked BSU's first Maaco Bowl Las Vegas appearance. The Broncos entered with an all-time bowl record of 6–4; in their last bowl appearance, they defeated TCU in the

2010 Fiesta Bowl The 2010 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl game was a post-season college football bowl game between the #4 TCU Horned Frogs, champions of the Mountain West Conference, and the #6 Boise State Broncos, champions of the Western Athletic Conference. The game ...

Game summary

Scoring

Statistics

Game notes

The two schools, which have been considered among the best non-AQ programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision, had previously met on six occasions. Boise State held a 4–2 advantage in prior matchups. The previous meeting between the two schools was a 36–3 win by the

Broncos A bucking horse is any breed or either gender of horse with a propensity to buck. They have been, and still are, referred to by various names, including bronco, broncho, and roughstock. The harder they buck, the more desirable they are for rod ...

in 2006. That matchup was played in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

. The Maaco Bowl Las Vegas marked the first time that the programs met in a bowl game. Utah left the

Mountain West Conference The Mountain West Conference (MW) is one of the collegiate athletic conferences affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) (formerly I-A). The MW officially began operations ...

for the Pac-12 Conference after the season, while Boise State joined the MWC from the

Western Athletic Conference The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is an NCAA Division I conference. The WAC covers a broad expanse of the western United States with member institutions located in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Texas. Due to mos ...

References

{{Utah Utes bowl game navbox

Maaco Bowl Las Vegas The Las Vegas Bowl is an NCAA Division I FBS annual post-season college football bowl game held in the Las Vegas area. First played in 1992, the bowl was originally held at the 40,000-seat Sam Boyd Stadium in Whitney, Nevada before moving to the ...

Las Vegas Bowl Boise State Broncos football bowl games Utah Utes football bowl games

Las Vegas Bowl The Las Vegas Bowl is an NCAA Division I FBS annual post-season college football bowl game held in the Las Vegas area. First played in 1992, the bowl was originally held at the 40,000-seat Sam Boyd Stadium in Whitney, Nevada before moving to the ...

December 2010 sports events in the United States 21st century in Las Vegas