San Diego State is now a mid-major football elite, as it should’ve been all along

Football games are 60 minutes long.

Motivation is a tricky thing in bowl games. You might be rusty. You might be undergoing a coaching change. You might come out firing, only to find your attention span is not what it was a couple of months ago.

Three of Saturday’s bowls featured second-quarter plot twists.

The final 45 minutes of ASU-UCF were basically a 14-13 split. UL outscored Southern Miss by seven over the final 52 minutes in New Orleans. In both cases, early bursts made the difference.

Not so in Las Vegas. In the marquee FBS game of the day, San Diego State adjusted defensively then caught fire on offense.

Houston’s Greg Ward Jr. finished his career with a forgettable performance. He began 6-for-9 with a sack during the Cougars’ early 10-0 run, and technically he finished by completing 19 of his final 25 passes. But the 19 completions gained only 160 yards, and four of those six incompletions were picked off. Oh yeah, and SDSU sacked him six more times.

The Aztecs did to Houston what they’ve done to quite a few teams over the last two years. They ranked 25th in Def. S&P+ last year and came into Saturday ranked 33rd this year; havoc was the primary reason why. They were 12th in the country in tackles for loss and 14th in passes defensed in 2015, and this year they are first in passes defensed. Rocky Long’s 3-3-5 confuses you, and once the Aztecs get a step on you, you rarely recover.

The story of the day in Las Vegas was Donnel Pumphrey breaking (well, “breaking”) Ron Dayne’s career rushing record. And Pumphrey put together a nice day (115 yards on 19 carries against Ed Oliver and a solid Houston front).

But here are Houston’s final 10 possessions:

No wonder the Cougar defense gave out.

San Diego State is now 22-6 since the start of 2015. For all of the hell Brady Hoke has received for his failure as Michigan head coach and Oregon defensive coordinator, he set in motion a program rebuild when he was hired at SDSU in 2009.

The Aztecs were perhaps the biggest underachievers in the midmajor universe and had won fewer than four games per season over the nine years before Hoke’s arrival. They averaged eight wins per year from 2010 (Hoke’s second year) to 2014 (Long’s fourth), and they’ve broken through with back-to-back MWC titles in 11-win seasons since.

Underachievers, no more.

Technically, Bob Davie’s results at New Mexico haven’t been quite as impressive. Davie has gone 27-36 in five seasons, and his best season has been 2016’s 9-4.

But ... New Mexico won nine games in 2016!

When Long resigned from UNM following a 4-8 2008, he challenged the school’s commitment to football. The school responded by hiring Mike Locksley as its head coach and going 3-33 over the next three seasons.

Davie inherited a roster that was not only devoid of talent and experience, it was devoid of warm bodies. Major depth issues crippled his first three seasons. New Mexico won 11 games in three years, peaking at 4-8 and 91st in S&P+ in 2014. But after a decent 7-6 campaign last fall, the Lobos leapt in 2016.

They were 74th in S&P+ heading into Saturday’s wind-addled bowl, and they kept their distance from UTSA all day. They took a 16-6 lead into the fourth quarter, and when UTSA cut the lead to 16-13, they responded with a seven-minute, 75-yard touchdown drive to ice a 23-20 win.

Davie has crafted a program that fits what he can recruit. The Lobos run and run and run and attempt to wreak as much havoc as possible with their linebackers. They can’t pass, and they don’t play consistent defense, but they win with a relentless running game, one that will return key components in 2017: quarterback Lamar Jordan (91 nonsack rushing yards on Saturday) and running backs Tyrone Owens and Richard McQuarley.

UTSA remains a year ahead of schedule. The Roadrunners hired Frank Wilson to replace the retired Larry Coker, based primarily on Wilson’s flawless record as a recruiter. He has yet to ink his first full-season recruiting class (it currently ranks first in Conference USA), but he improved UTSA from 3-9 and 113th in S&P+ to 6-7 and 104th. Nice first step.

The Camellia Bowl was a slow burn. Appalachian State and Toledo traded touchdowns in both the first and second quarters. ASU had characteristically controlled the ball and the clock — 19 minutes of possession to 11, 242 yards to 172 — but big plays created two Toledo touchdowns and a tie game. Rhythm was an issue. Aside from the four touchdowns, the other 10 possessions of the first half were all punts; six were three-and-outs. That’s a lot of quick commercial breaks.

Things picked up in the third quarter. ASU drove 69 yards for the go-ahead score, and Toledo responded with a 14-play touchdown drive. ASU’s Darrynton Evans raced 94 yards for a touchdown on the kickoff, and Toledo responded with a five-play, 75-yard drive.

ASU kicked a 39-yard field goal to take a 31-28 lead with 5:14 left, then things got weird.

The Rockets drove inside the Mountaineers’ 20. And on fourth-and-a-short-2 from the ASU 8 with under two minutes left, Toledo lined up to go for it. With the play clock running down, Toledo head coach Jason Candle ran toward a referee to call timeout, then decided against it. Toledo took a delay of game penalty (??) and then missed a 30-yard field goal.

Final score: 31-28.

It was a confusing finish, but it went down as yet another Appalachian State win. The Mountaineers are 28-10 since joining FBS, 21-5 since the start of the 2015 season. They are 14-2 in conference play, they’ve won two bowls, and three of their five losses came against ranked teams (Clemson in 2015, Tennessee and Miami in 2016).

After being the class of FCS in the mid-2000s, they took on the Sun Belt challenge and have succeeded dramatically.

They’re also young. Their leading passer, rusher, and receiver are scheduled to return; so are four of their top five tacklers. They are well-established to unleash an Arkansas State-ian level of consistency. (With Saturday’s Cure Bowl win, the Red Wolves finished 8-5, their fifth season with at least eight wins in six years despite four coaching changes.)

Heading into their final three games, Grambling had every goal left on the table: Win the SWAC West, win the SWAC, win the Celebration Bowl. Against three of their better opponents to date (Southern, Alcorn State, NC Central), the Tigers got outscored by a combined 33-17 in the first halves of these games.

The G-Men, however, are finishers. They outscored Southern, 35-17, after halftime to turn a close game into a rout. They spotted Alcorn State 17 points then sped past the Braves, 27-3.

In Saturday’s second annual Celebration Bowl — the second-best-attended bowl of the day (ahead of two bowls with hometown competitors: New Mexico in the New Mexico Bowl, UCF in the Cure Bowl) — GSU trailed 3-0 at halftime before jumping ahead with 10 third-quarter points. Thanks to, of all things, a key Celebration Bowl celebration penalty, that was enough. With a 10-9 victory, Broderick Fobbs’ Tigers are the 2016 black college national champions.