This is not a bowl reward for the Aztecs, not when 54 teams — 54 — were picked for games kicking off later on the schedule. This is not respect, not when your own conference scrambles at the wire to find a spot, any spot, for you to land.

The Armed Forces Bowl and Sunday’s domino-tumbling dust isn’t an indictment of these Aztecs. These Aztecs could win 11 games for the third consecutive season and a third straight bowl game.

This is an indictment of a tie-in tangled, TV-dictated system. And more pointedly, it’s an indictment of the Mountain West conference.

Arguments with Saquon Barkley and Lamar Jackson aside, San Diego State features the country’s most versatile talent in Rashaad Penny — no matter what so many asleep-at-the-wheel Heisman Trophy voters think. The country’s leading rusher and all-purpose beast piled up breakout games against Stanford and Arizona State despite playing behind the most inexperienced line of any award-chasing resume in America. The team hovers just two spots outside the Top 25 rankings.


And yet ... this.

Does the lack of Mountain West sway and non-existent leverage feel familiar? It should. Hit rewind to March 2016 when San Diego State’s basketball team won 25 games, made a laughing stock of the regular-season title chase, assembled a Top 40 RPI and faced Kansas, West Virginia, Utah and Cal along the way before being tripped up in the final minute of the league title game.

Poof. NCAA Tournament run over, because of the Mountain West, because of its profile slide, because of weak scheduling by too many of your league neighbors, because of an inability to work the back room and cut deals, because of a reputation erosion 100 drips and drops in the making.

Football boss Rocky Long said most of the right things about punching a ticket to Fort Worth, of course. You do zero good trashing the bowl that landed in your shell-shocked lap. Ditto for your opponent, especially when it’s a service academy. Underneath, though, you wonder if Long is masking a slow burn with an equally motivating slow fuse.


For unvarnished, raw-nerved reaction, mosey over to Twitter. The social media breadcrumbs in the minutes after the announcement told the story of how it truly felt. From Penny: “To be honest I’m not even surprised LOL.” From defensive back Kameron Kelly: “Thankful anyways” with a creative collection of symbols that created the image of someone shrugging. And the most direct blast from a fan: “New team mascot” with an image of Rodney Dangerfield and the hashtag “NoRespect.”

Long, hidden among the weeds of graciousness, even hinted at the lack of buzz: “Today was OK. It was nice to finally get invited to a bowl game.”

This isn’t a moment devoid of any upside. First of all, you’re playing — though that feels less significant every year with the avalanche of games and the next tax-preparation software sponsor peeking around the corner. The later kickoff means more program-developing practices than games in New Mexico or Idaho. You’ve sunk deep Texas roots into your coaching staff, so a Lone Star State destination cracks the door to rich recruiting soil.

In the end, though, there’s not nearly enough upside … particularly in a season that started 6-0 with whispers of the New Year’s Six spotlight.


There’s not the shiny NFL stadium and bowl dripping with name cachet, like Foster Farms. There’s not the easier-to-reach destination for your fickle fan base. There’s not, in the end, the Power 5 opponent competitive warrior Long craved.

Army is an 8-3 paper tiger with great tires — a run game preying on teetering tomato cans without a single victory against someone with a winning record and a loss to 5-7 Tulane. You get the feeling Long would play a Power 5 team outside of a snowy bowling alley in Dayton, Ohio, tomorrow if it meant a chance to continue proving this is becoming a bring-all-comers program.

This team is better. It deserved better.

The Aztecs were strangled by conference tie-ins and a Wisconsin loss/committee decision that forced the Big Ten out of football’s final four. To understand how different college football universes feel, the brutal heartbreak of Bucky Badger and Brutus Buckeye meant a team at the conference’s bowl bottom, Purdue, landed in the 49ers’ handsome Santa Clara home … leaving one of another conference’s best, the Aztecs, sprinting for one of the final seats on the bowl bus.


That, in a maddening nutshell is your Mountain West lot in life. In the end, as one astute Twitter poster ruminated: The Aztecs got “Mountain Wested.”

That’s not all they got, unfortunately.


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bryce.miller@sduniontribune.com