2009 Maaco Bowl Las Vegas

The 2009 Maaco Bowl Las Vegas was an NCAA-sanctioned Division I FBS post-season college football bowl game, in which the Brigham Young Cougars defeated the Oregon State Beavers 44–20.^[2] The game was played on Tuesday, December 22, 2009, at 5 p.m. PST at 40,000-seat Sam Boyd Stadium, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in Whitney, Nevada, and was televised on ESPN.

BYU played in the Las Vegas Bowl for the fifth straight year. BYU had gone 2–2 against Pac-10 opponents in the last four Las Vegas Bowls. This was the ninth meeting between the two teams, although the first time they met in this bowl game. Prior to the 2009 Las Vegas Bowl, Oregon State had a 5–3 lead in the series, winning the last meeting 10–7 in 1986.^[3] This was the first postseason meeting between the two teams. Bronco Mendenhall, head coach for Brigham Young, is an Oregon State alumnus and it was revealed during the broadcast that he chose Oregon State specifically because Brigham Young did not recruit him and Oregon State had a game with BYU scheduled for the 1986 season. The 2009 game was the first meeting of two ranked teams in the bowl game's history.