SEATTLE -- Organizers of the Seattle Bowl say they don't need the Pac-10 to survive.

The Mountain West Conference is now aligned with the Dec. 30 game, replacing the Pac-10. The game, to be played in the new downtown Seahawks Stadium, will match the No. 3 or No. 4 Mountain West team against the No. 5 or No. 6 team from the Atlantic Coast Conference in the bowl's second year.

The conferences have agreed to five-year contracts with the bowl.

Georgia Tech defeated Stanford, the fourth-place Pac-10 team, 24-14 in the first Seattle Bowl on Dec. 27, 2001.

"We're in a great football market," said Seattle Bowl executive director Jim Haugh. "I think football by any means is the No. 1 sport in the Pacific Northwest, especially college football. Because of that, I think this bowl is bound for success."

Others aren't so sure after the Pac-10 decided earlier this year to send its fifth-place team to the Las Vegas Bowl instead of to Seattle. That's when the Seattle Bowl approached the Mountain West Conference.

The 2002 season marks the fourth year of competition for the league, made up of eight teams that broke from the Western Athletic Conference: Air Force, Brigham Young, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Nevada-Las Vegas, Utah and Wyoming.

The Pac-10 came back to Seattle Bowl organizers about two weeks ago and proposed sending its sixth-place team to Seattle. By then, the Seattle Bowl already had an agreement with the Mountain West Conference and organizers weren't going to back out of that commitment, Haugh said.

"That's not good business practice," he said.

The game was previously the Oahu Bowl. It moved to Seattle because of declining revenue in Honolulu. The first Seattle Bowl was played at Safeco Field, with the ballpark getting a major transformation for its first big non-baseball event.

With just more than 30,000 fans for the game, attendance was lower than expected. But about 3,000 tickets were sold the day of the game, showing local interest.

Organizers believe the bowl will make it.

Ideally, Haugh said, a Northwest team would be involved. But he insists teams from the Mountain West Conference can travel to Seattle more easily than some Pac-10 teams.

"We feel where we are right now, we got off to a great start last year and will continue building momentum," Haugh said.

Both conferences said they are willing to work with the bowl to make sure the same teams don't play in the game in consecutive years, Haugh said.

"That will give us a fresh look," he said. "That's the great thing about working with those two particular conferences. There is flexibility."

The Seattle Bowl had a per-team payout of $750,000 in its inaugural year. It could be $1 million this year, organizers say. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.

The bowl broke even in its first year and had high TV ratings, Haugh said.

"We think for a first-year bowl last year our numbers rivaled bowls that have been around for a while," Haugh said. "So we were happy with that first year, with only six months to plan, a soft economy and a late start after 9-11."