Mark May to have front row seat for word eating

The Poinsettia Bowl just keeps getting better and better.

Rather than suffer through the typical weekday-game broadcast team, ESPN is bringing out its big guns for the Poinsettia Bowl ... or at least, its bigger guns. And this should make Bronco fans very happy.

ESPN has made a switch on who will call the Poinsettia Bowl, putting Rece Davis, Lou Holtz and Mark May on the marquee non-BCS game.

Bronco fans could not have asked for a better announcing team, not because the three are great at announcing, but because they feature one of Boise State's biggest detractors. May has gained infamy in Bronco Nation for his comments about the Broncos and the Mountain West Conference, claiming that BSU would lose four conference games if they were in the top-heavy MWC. Apparently, he has been talking to Trev Alberts, circa 2006.

Is May's four-loss prediction unrealistic? Of course it is. We assume he had implied Bronco losses to Utah, TCU, BYU, and Air Force in this mythical conference play he dreamed up. And were this true, it would mean that Boise State is no match for the mighty Cougars (who were blown out by Utah and TCU) and the plucky Falcons (who were blown out by BYU).

Beating TCU would put all of May's pessimism to rest for good - not that it really matters in the long run.

Boise State's success is not measured by what an ESPN talking head says about them on a college football postgame highlight show. The Mountain West will not bar the Broncos' admission based on May's opinion. As we've discussed before, Boise State does not need to prove to anyone that they belong among the MWC elite. They've already proven their worthiness time and again.

Having May front and center for the Broncos' bowl game is completely irrelevant in the big picture of Boise State football. In the small picture, though, it should be quite gratifying.

We look forward to a speechless May stuttering through fourth quarter analysis of a game that did not go at all like he had planned in his Bowl Pick 'Em. We can picture his deer-in-the-headlights look when the cameras come into the booth for unnecessary cut-ins during timeouts. And we really, really hope that Rece Davis pulls an Al Michaels Super Bowl XXXIV and cuts May off for an extended period of time as Al did to a helpless Boomer Esiason.

May should provide a fantastically belittling pregame intro and a horribly slanted halftime analysis. He is sure to canonize TCU players and question the NFL viability of Ian Johnson. He could be smarmy, bewildered, and mortified - and, at times, all three.

And if we're lucky, maybe Lou Holtz will spit on him during a patented Lou Holtz rant.

Thank you, ESPN. You have made the Poinsettia Bowl better already.

Read more: TCU knows slowing Boise State is tricky [Star-Telegram]