Santoro: Media’s love affair with Boise State will never end

Sports Fodder:

The Mountain West media's love affair with the Boise State Broncos' football program just never ends.

Oh, we get it. The media, such that it is these days, wants to attach itself to something meaningful and the only school in the Mountain West that has had any true meaning east of Denver the last two-plus decades with any sort of consistency is Boise State.

That's why the media gave 38 of its 46 first-place votes in its annual preseason poll to boys from Boy-C, making the Broncos the runaway favorites to win the Mountain West this fall. None of this, of course, surprised anybody. This entire century it's been Boise State this year, next year and every year as far as the league media is concerned, with only brief interruptions.

But does Boise State deserve so much love (nearly 90 percent of the first-place votes) this summer? Are the Broncos still heads and tails and shoulder pads above the other 11 teams in the league to warrant that much respect?

Let's not forget Boise State won the Mountain West championship last season during a year in which it felt compelled to fire its head coach (Andy Avalos) in November. The Broncos lost six games last year. After winning the Mountain West title they were beaten by two touchdowns in the L.A. Bowl by a five-loss UCLA team. Boise's best quarterback (Taylen Green) left for Arkansas and its best wide receiver (Eric McAlister) departed for TCU after the season. Nothing puts a Group of 5 champion in its place quicker than Arkansas and TCU stealing your best players after the season.

But all of those red flags simply screamed "Best Team in the Mountain West By Far" to the league's media earlier this month. Yes, the Broncos tightened their belts enough to win their final four league games to win the conference title last year. But, really, what did they do? They beat an awful New Mexico team, a seven-loss, dreadful Utah State team, a team (Air Force) decimated by injuries by season's end and, well, UNLV, to win the title. All you need to know about the Mountain West in 2023 is that its league champion was crowned after beating UNLV in Las Vegas. 

Boise State, as everyone who has actually watched a Broncos game the past decade or so, is not the indestructible, powerful, mighty, dominating force it was earlier this century. Nobody believes the blue turf has magical powers anymore. They've had three coaches in the last four years. They've lost 15 games over the last three years. Jay Norvell, a guy who can't win a big game to save his coaching life, beat Boise in 2021 (with Nevada) and in 2023 (with Colorado State).

Boise lost the league title game in 2020 to San Jose State, for goodness’ sake. NIL has made them, like everyone else in the Mountain West, simply a talent breeding farm for schools with big-time resources. Boise State might still be the best in the Mountain West every July, but 38-of-44 first-place votes? Stop it.

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The one team that received zero respect in the Mountain West from the media is, of course, the Nevada Wolf Pack.

The media believes the Wolf Pack will finish 12th in the conference this fall behind even the New Mexico Lobos. Now, of course, nobody is suggesting the Pack deserved even one of those eight first-place votes that didn't go to Boise State. We're not even suggesting the Wolf Pack deserved even a 10^th-place vote.

But 12th place behind the Lobos? Didn't the Pack just beat the Lobos this past October? The Lobos are one of the worst FBS programs in the history of the sport. They have gone 53-137 over the last 16 seasons combined. They've won 19 games over the last seven seasons. They've had seven winning seasons since 1998. The last time the Lobos lost fewer than four games in any one season was 1982. Before that it was 1971.

Bronco Mendenhall, who was hired after last season, will be their sixth head coach since 2008. The only bowl the Lobos have been invited to since 2004 (four times) is the New Mexico Bowl. The Pack, admittedly, has had two horrible seasons in a row. But hasn't New Mexico had about eight horrible decades in a row?

What is the league media telling us by voting the Wolf Pack to finish below the Lobos this season? Well, two or three things.

You have to understand that media polls, as far as preseason standing predictions, are basically a repeat of the previous year's standings. The media, like everyone else, has no clue what is going to happen in a given Mountain West season and spends roughly six seconds from the end of the previous season until it has to vote in the league preseason poll actually paying attention to what is going on in the league. Paying attention to Mountain West football from August through December, after all, is penance enough.

The other thing the media is telling us is that Wolf Pack football is at its lowest point since the school brought back the sport in 1951 after a one-year break. It's a program that deserves no respect.

But when the media sees New Mexico football on any list, it should immediately, like a nervous twitch brought on by decades of despair, go directly to the bottom of that list and scribble down the Lobos’ name.

It is amazing how quickly and thoroughly the Wolf Pack has lost respect in the Mountain West. Yes, the last two years have been dreadful with a 4-20 overall combined record. So, thank you, Ken Wilson, for that. But it's just two years. Two years shouldn't ruin decades of accomplishment. That 4-20 record, after all, was put in place by a head coach (Big Game Jay Norvell) who stole most everything of value from the Pack in the middle of the night after the 2021 season.

But Wilson is long gone. Norvell, it seems, is finished pillaging the Pack. Jeff Choate is now in charge and, well, the program we see this fall should look much closer to the one that produced 13 winning seasons out of 17 from 2005 through 2021 than it does the 2022 and 2023 versions.

Chris Ault didn't build a model mid-major program at Nevada starting in 1976 and restarting again in 1994 and 2004, only to see it turn into the New Mexico Lobos after just two bad seasons. Boise got 38-of-44 first-place votes not only because of what it has done recently but also for what it has done down through the years. A program like Nevada, which was the model Boise State followed starting in the 1990s to create its own greatness, should get the same sort of respect.

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UNLV finally has one solid season last year (it still lost five games) and it already is picked to finish second in the Mountain West. The Rebels even lost the most important player to their 2023 season, quarterback Jayden Maiava, to the USC Trojans this past offseason, and still got four first-place votes.

The media these days, it seems, basically only pays attention to what is currently trending on social media.

But nobody, apparently, noticed the Rebels lost four of their final seven games last year once their schedule toughened up. They lost the Mountain West title game by 24 points at home to a team that had an interim head coach.

We'll start to believe in the UNLV mirage if they put together another solid season in 2024. Nothing in Las Vegas, of course, is real and is what it is supposed to be. The entire city's economy is based on the actions of blurry-eyed, alcohol-filled, distracted consumers.

The same holds true for the Rebel football program for now.

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The Mountain West football program that could suffer a severe downturn this year is San Jose State.

Brent Brennan, always the most underrated head coach in the Mountain West, held the fragile Spartans together with glue, string, tape and positive thinking the last seven years. The Spartans went 31-26 the last five years combined and even won the 2020 (COVID) Mountain West title.

But Brennan is now gone, having been lured away by the Arizona Wildcats, where he will now be a Big 12 head coach. There's only so much string, glue, tape and positive thoughts one man can muster, after all.

The Spartans replaced Brennan with Ken Niumatalolo, a former UCLA (2023), Navy (1995-98, 2002-07) and UNLV (1999-2001) assistant and Navy (2007-22) head coach. He also played quarterback at Hawaii from 1986-89 and is a Hawaii native.

Niumatalolo was 109-83 as Navy's head coach and went to 11 bowl games, though he won three or four games in four of his final five years. The 59-year-old is certainly a solid coach, though he did spend the bulk of last season as UCLA's director of leadership and away from on-field coaching. But coaching at Navy is not the same as coaching at San Jose State.

The Spartans won more than six games in a season just three times from 1993 through 2019 before Brennan turned the program around. The Spartans will also always be overlooked in their own region behind California and Stanford, not to mention the San Francisco 49ers. They play in an old stadium that gets a fresh coat of paint and a makeover every few decades. If you and a few of your millionaire buddies pool your resources, odds are you can get your name on the Spartans’ stadium eventually. Basically, if the Spartans were located in Idaho, Montana or Utah, they'd likely be playing in the Big Sky Conference.

Niumatalolo will have his hands full.

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Athlon, one of the leading college football media publications, recently graded all of the head coaching hires this offseason. Nevada's Jeff Choate was given a grade of B +, ranking him at No. 13 overall.

Choate, an experienced assistant (starting in 1992) and former head coach at Montana State (2016-19) clearly deserves that B+ grade. He's coached at big-time programs (Washington State, Florida, Texas) and seems like a natural leader. But when you look at Athlon's other grades for some other hires this offseason, its likely they got the Choate grade right by accident.

Spencer Danielson, who took over Boise State last November and led the Broncos to the Mountain West title, was given a hiring grade of just B-, just like Niumatalolo. What does a coach have to do to earn at least a grade of B? Win a national title?

The Bronco Mendenhall hire at New Mexico was given a grade of A. Mendenhall hasn't been a head coach since he stepped down after the 2021 season at Virginia. He was just 36-38 in six years at Virginia. He had a nice run at BYU, from 2005-15 in the Mountain West and as an independent, but he seemed to get exposed in the ACC with Virginia, going 22-27 in league games.

New Mexico is the job he came out of a two-year retirement for? 

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Colorado State and head coach Jay Norvell will play eight of its 12 regular season games this year in the state of Colorado.

In addition to its home Mountain West games against Utah State, Wyoming, New Mexico and San Jose State, Norvell's Rams will play at home against UTEP, Colorado and Northern Colorado and on the road in the state of Colorado at Air Force. The only games outside Colorado will be at Texas, Oregon State, Fresno State and Nevada (Nov. 2).

The Rams' schedule is reminiscent of Norvell's Nevada 2020 schedule when the Wolf Pack, largely due to COVID-19, played seven of its nine games in the state of Nevada. The Pack went 6-1 in the state of Nevada and 0-2 outside the Silver State, losing at Hawaii and Boise State.

If 2020 is any indication, Norvell's Rams will finish something along the lines of 7-5 this year, going 7-1 in the state of Colorado and 0-4 outside the state.