The Poinsettia Bowl’s elephant in the room

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Let’s be honest about what December’s Poinsettia Bowl actually is.

It’s not just a bowl game. It’s not just a feel-good story about San Diego getting its postseason football back after a decade away, though that part is genuinely worth celebrating. It’s also a snapshot of the most complicated, litigated and frankly, exhausting conference relationship in modern college athletics.

All of it gift-wrapped in holiday branding to be dropped at Snapdragon Stadium this December.

From my Poinsettia Bowl revival story last month, I leaned into the nostalgia of it. The history. The military roots, the Holiday Bowl spinoff era, SJSU’s Ken Niumatalolo’s first game on the Navy sideline back in 2007. There’s genuine beauty in bringing that bowl back to a deserving city.

There’s also something genuinely compelling about the new Pac-12 clawing its way back from the brink to want to plant a flag in December with a championship-level bowl game on the West Coast.

But this last month added new context and a clarifying announcement that changes the bowl’s storyline considerably.

When the Poinsettia Bowl was first rumored, the working premise was a Mountain West champion versus a Pac-12 champion. A true West Coast championship clash. Two conferences, one city, something meaningful for everybody. It felt like a statement about Western college football’s identity.

What was formally announced last week is something different: the Pac-12 champion against a Pac-12 legacy program. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Oregon, UCLA, USC, Utah, Washington; schools that scattered to the ACC, Big Ten and Big 12 when the old conference nearly folded are now the designated opponent pool.

The Mountain West is not in the equation.

When the lawyers showed up, nobody looked good

The Pac-12 and Mountain West reached an agreement in principle last week resolving the pending lawsuits over poaching and exit fees. It was a legal saga that at various points involved allegations of fraud, secret commissioner meetings, withheld CFP revenue and enough seven-figure legal bills to make any athletics director reach for antacids.

The Mountain West was seeking more than $150 million in fees as a result of losing five schools to the Pac-12. The Pac-12 responded by filing its own lawsuit, claiming the poaching clause it had voluntarily signed was somehow invalid.

Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State are all leaving the Mountain West on July 1 to join the Pac-12. Five programs that built this league’s football identity over the last two decades now helping rebuild a conference that itself nearly ceased to exist.

The Mountain West didn’t just lose five pillars to the Pac-12. It also lost its seat at the table for the bowl game being played in its own backyard. Snapdragon Stadium carries Mountain West geography, Mountain West history and Mountain West stadium DNA. San Diego State called that building home. The Poinsettia Bowl’s modern era was built largely on Mountain West programs, including two Boise State appearances in that very venue.

This isn’t really a manufactured grievance. It’s just the geography and context doing the talking.

And let’s be equally direct about what the Mountain West is missing here. A Power 4 versus Group of 6 bowl matchup is not a common thing. It is genuinely good for mid-major conferences when those games exist. They provide national exposure, recruiting visibility and a legitimate measuring stick.

A Pac-12 champion versus a Mountain West champion in San Diego in December would have been exactly that kind of rare, meaningful stage. The fact that it instead becomes a Pac-12 family reunion is good for the Pac-12. It is, by the same math, a not-good thing for the Mountain West.

What both conferences actually owe the west

The lawsuits may end, but the animosity doesn’t. These institutions spent a year accusing each other of fraud and breach of contract in federal court. A mediated settlement does not erase the fact that Boise State had its CFP money withheld or that the Mountain West believed it was owed $55 million in poaching penalties that the Pac-12 decided, after signing the agreement, were simply inconvenient.

Both leagues carry real scar tissue into 2026.

In all honesty, MWCconnection covers both the Mountain West and Pac-12 now and we mean that without asterisk or apology. We want the Pac-12’s rebuild to succeed. The schools that left the MW should continue to thrive on their new stage.

AND the Mountain West rebuilt with the addition of UTEP, North Dakota State and Northern Illinois joining the football fold should prove it doesn’t need those five schools to remain a legitimate conference.

The challenge is how these teams and conferences answer the bell with their collective competitiveness. As the adage goes, any semblance of “revenge,” wherever it may stem, should come through success.

Hopefully, the new Poinsettia Bowl should reflect all of that. Imagine a Mountain West champion on one sideline. A Pac-12 champion on the other. Two Western conferences, post-litigation, settling things the right way: between the lines in December in a city that belongs to both of them.

That bowl game would say something real about the West.

December’s version will still be worth watching. Just know there’s a longer story behind who got the invitation and who didn’t.

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