After San Diego State’s home loss to Boise State on Saturday night, the battle to represent the Group of Five conferences in a New Year’s Six Bowl is wide open.
With a 6-0 record and a No. 19 ranking, the Aztecs — thanks to their easy Mountain West schedule — looked like a fairly safe bet to run the table and play in a big bowl. Now, thanks to Boise’s dominant 31-14 win, the chances of several other teams, mostly in the American Athletic Conference, to compete for that spot have dramatically increased.
Boise State built its lead with two non-offensive touchdowns in the first quarter. First, Avery Williams returned a punt 53 yards for a touchdown.
.@big_ave21 w/ 53-yard punt return TD for @BroncoSportsFB! Boise State leads #18/19 @Aztec_Football 7-0. 6:17 left in 1Q #mwfb #MWLateNight pic.twitter.com/4bpGWwwrIc
— Mountain West (@MountainWest) October 15, 2017
A few minutes later, the lead increased to 14-0 when Kekaula Kaniho returned an ill-advised lateral by SDSU QB Christian Chapman 34 yards for a score.
Offensively, San Diego State could not get anything going. The Aztecs run the ball nearly 68 percent of the time, mostly on the back of star senior Rashaad Penny. Though he became the second player to reach 1,000 yards this season, Penny finished with a season-low 53 yards on 21 attempts.
Boise’s lead was 21-0 by the time halftime rolled around and 24-7 early in the fourth. The Aztecs briefly made things interesting when a Penny 11-yard touchdown run made it 24-14 with 10:06 to go, but the SDSU defense could not get a stop to get the ball back to the offense. The Broncos ultimately sealed the win with a nine-play, 70-yard drive that took more than five minutes off the clock. The drive — and upset victory — was capped off by an Alexander Mattison touchdown run.
Boise State exposed San Diego State’s weaknesses, mainly that it has trouble in the passing game. But on a broader scale, the win put the top teams in the AAC firmly in the mix to play in a NY6 bowl.
No. 18 USF and No. 22 UCF are both still undefeated at 6-0 and 5-0, respectively, while Memphis and No. 25 Navy both sit at 5-1. Navy was also unbeaten entering Saturday but were knocked off 30-27 by the Tigers, which has a win over UCLA under their belt.
UCF travels to Navy next Saturday in another big conference matchup. If UCF can get through that one — it won’t be easy — things set up for the UCF-USF matchup in the regular season finale to potentially have far-reaching implications.
And while the AAC clearly has the top contenders to play in a CFP bowl, a few other teams, like Toledo of the MAC and Marshall in Conference USA, will also be in the mix. Both teams are 5-1 with their only loss coming to a Power Five team. Toledo lost 52-30 at No. 11 Miami while Marshall fell 37-20 at No. 20 NC State.
There’s a lot of football left to be played, but the AAC looks to be sitting pretty among the Group of Five conferences.
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Sam Cooper is a writer for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!
