Toasty: No. 12 BYU accepts invitation to Pop-Tarts Bowl after Big 12 championship loss

GRAPEVINE, Texas (KSL.com) — BYU’s College Football Playoff candidacy went up to the final week of the regular season, and was formally eliminated when the Cougars weren’t selected as one of 12 teams for the latest CFP bracket Sunday morning.

But the second loss of the season didn’t only knock out the Big 12 runners-up. They’ll face another team impacted by that loss in a bowl game.

The 12th-ranked Cougars accepted an invitation Sunday to the wildly popular and often zany Pop-Tarts Bowl, setting up a season-ending showdown Dec. 27 with ACC foe Georgia Tech.

The bowl game will kick off at 1:30 p.m. MST on ABC.

The Cougars (11-2) were initially set to face the Fighting Irish (10-2) after the last two teams left out of the College Football Playoff’s 12-team bracket were made available when Miami jumped Notre Dame for an at-large spot due to BYU’s loss to No. 4 Texas Tech in the Big 12 championship game.

“Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, we had the side-by-side comparison that everyone had been hungry for,” Arkansas athletic director and selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek told ESPN.

Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua put it another way.

“We feel like the playoff was stolen from our student-athletes,” Bevacqua told Yahoo! Sports.

But before the invitations could be finalized, Notre Dame released a statement saying the Irish were opting out of their bowl game. That left BYU to face a member of the ACC, which is contracted (along with the Big 12) for the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

Enter the 22nd-ranked Yellowjackets, who were part of the CFP rankings in the final week of the season for the first time since the Playoff’s inaugural campaign of 2017 upon closing the regular season with a 9-3 record.

Georgia Tech is led by quarterback Haynes King, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound dual-threat signal caller who threw for 2,697 yards and 12 touchdowns while running for a team-high 1,019 yards and 15 scores en route to an 8-0 start.

In addition to being the team’s leading passer, King has led the Yellowjackets in rushing in eight of their 12 games of the 2025 campaign. And he’ll try to do it again against another dual-threat quarterback in BYU freshman Bear Bachmeier and a top-30 defense nationally that ranks 19th in scoring defense.

Originally called the Blockbuster Bowl in Miami in 1990, the Pop-Tarts Bowl was born from a multi-year agreement with Florida Citrus Sports in 2023 and has grown to become one of the more iconic — if not fun and at times downright silly — bowl games in college football.

Drawing fans to the 60,219-seat Camping World Stadium in downtown Orlando, the game with a $6 million payout has built a cult following with its late December kickoff, ABC broadcast, and live mascots.

That’s right; the Pop-Tarts Bowl features live Pop-Tarts performing stunts throughout the game. And at the close of the past two contests — won back Kansas State in 2023 and Iowa State in 2024 — the winning team had the honor of plunging a mascot of their choice into a giant “toaster” to produce an edible version of their new friend.

Slightly cannibalistic? Perhaps. Zany? Sure. But completely fun and of the nonsensical spirit that all college football bowl games should possess? Absolutely.

The surviving mascots even opened the 2025 season, when Frosted Wild Berry and Frosted Hot Fudge Sundae took part in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic between K-State and Iowa State in Dublin, Ireland back in August.

Now it’s BYU’s turn to experience the zaniness.