4 Teams In The Running To Win The Mountain West

The San Jose State Spartans were one of the biggest surprises in college football in 2020. A long-downtrodden program came out of nowhere to play elite defense and go unbeaten, winning the conference championship. Boise State, Fresno State, and San Diego State had been the top programs in the conference over the previous several seasons, making San Jose State’s rise from the ashes that much more improbable. Are the Spartans here to stay, or will one of the Mountain West’s other elites take back the crown in the conference? Also, will another team make a sneaky run to the top? There are lots of fascinating questions to explore.

Boise State Broncos

The standard-bearer over a longer period of time in the Mountain West Conference has been Boise State. The Broncos were not terrible last year – they finished 5-2 – but San Jose State did have a better year. The shortened pandemic season – in which Boise State played only seven games – did not give Boise State as much of a chance to develop and evolve, but within that constrained context, San Jose State did play better. Boise State enters this season under a new head coach. Bryan Harsin moved to Auburn, while former Oregon defensive coordinator Andy Avalos made the trip to Boise to get his first head coaching job. Boise State has two veteran quarterbacks returning, so the Broncos will have a familiar face under center to lend stability to the offense in Avalos’s first season. The pieces are in place for Boise State to have a very good team and take back what it lost last year.

San Jose State Spartans

The Spartans, under coach Brent Brennan, played lights-out defense last year, giving up an average of just under 20 points per game. The Spartans didn’t lose a single game in Mountain West play, beating Nevada in the Mountain West Championship Game. San Jose State had a tremendous red zone defense this past season. It made the timely plays which increased its margin for error while decreasing its opponents’ margin for error. This wasn’t a flashy team, but it was a rugged team, and most of its internal core is back for the 2021 campaign. With Brennan, one of the best coaches in the country, leading this group, it seems reasonable to think that SJSU will at least remain in the hunt for the division and conference championships until the final few weeks of the season.

Nevada Wolf Pack

Coach Jay Norvell came one win short of claiming the Mountain West championship last season. He has veteran Carson Strong, a highly-touted quarterback, returning this season. No Mountain West team scored more than Nevada’s 277 points last season. Strong has one more year of experience, so there is every expectation that the Wolf Pack can indeed take the next step, vault past San Jose State in the West Division of the conference, and then beat the Mountain Division winner – probably Boise State – for the conference title.

Fresno State Bulldogs

The presence of Kalen DeBoer – the head coach of the Bulldogs, who had worked as the team’s offensive coordinator a few years earlier before he moved to Indiana and then went back to Fresno when the head coaching position opened up – should provide a lot of structure and stability to the Bulldogs. Fresno State won’t be the favorite in the West Division, but if San Jose State or Nevada stumbles, it will be in the hunt in late November.