Boise State of the Mountain West Conference might have been the best Group of 5 football team, but the bowl season has solidified the argument that the American Athletic Conference is the best G5 league.
If North Texas beats Texas State on Friday in the First Responder Bowl, AAC teams will have won seven of the eight post-season games they played. The MAC is the only other conference close to that mark, standing 4-2 before Buffalo plays Liberty in the Bahamas Bowl on Saturday.
Tulane is the only AAC team to lose a bowl game, falling 33-8 against Florida in the Gasparilla Bowl. The Green Wave had to play without quarterback Darien Mensah, who transferred to Duke after Tulane participated in the conference championship game.
AAC teams didn’t fatten up on tomato cans, either.
Three teams won games against Power 4 representatives – Memphis over West Virginia (Big 12), Navy over Oklahoma, (SEC) and East Carolina over N.C. State (ACC).
And how did the Mountain West fare?
Not so well.
Its teams lost four of the five post-season games they played, including Boise’s 31-14 loss to Penn State in the College Football Playoff.
USF, of course, treated the nation to a rollicking 5-overtime win over San Jose State of the MW on Christmas Eve in Honolulu. Because the game was on national TV and was the only live sports event that night, the game attracted a lot of positive attention and reaction in the days that followed.
It was almost like, hey, those AAC teams can put on a pretty good show.
I’m not sure we can say the same for the Atlantic Coast Conference.
ACC teams are 2-10 with Virginia Tech against Minnesota in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl remaining. Shouldn’t Duke be playing in that one?
Anyway, AAC “power conference” teams lost to No. 24 UNLV (MW Conference), Toledo (MAC), UConn (independent), and East Carolina (AAC). At that rate, you’d think the American should consider adding ACC teams, and not the other way around.
Critics will say this all meaningless because the power conference teams will often have top players opt out of non-playoff bowl games. In The Athletic’s Top 50 NFL draft prospects for 2025, only five of the top 16 players whose teams were playing in non-College Football Playoff bowls suited up.
And Miami quarterback Cam Ward was roasted when he left the Hurricanes’ bowl game at halftime after throwing three touchdown passes.
That overlooks an important point, however.
Group of 5 teams aren’t loaded down with five-star prospects, but they also don’t see them leave early for the NFL. USF, for instance, had 36 seniors and graduate students on this year’s team. That’s a lot of football experience.
Memphis quarterback Seth Henigan started four years for the Tigers and threw a pair of touchdowns against West Virginia in the Scooter’s Coffee Frisco Bowl.
It’s not a fluke. The top half of the American is no stroll through the park. I’ll make one more point: No one is saying Boise State didn’t deserve to go to the playoffs after going 7-0 in the Mountain West and 12-1 in the regular season. However, if the Broncos had to navigate the AAC, they would have found the journey much tougher.
I guess we’ll out, won’t we? Boise State travels to Tampa to open the 2025 season against USF.