Offerpad Arizona Bowl Primer: Conference Champs Collide

Ball State Bowl Week is driven by Stoops.
Stoops

The Ball State football team is less than a week away from its matchup with No. 19 San Jose State in the Offerpad Arizona Bowl.

The Cardinals and Spartans will kick off New Year's Eve at noon MT (2 p.m. ET) from Arizona Stadium in Tucson on CBS and WLBC.

The matchup is notable for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is head coach Mike Neu's Cardinals seeking to take care of "unfinished business" as they play for the program's first bowl victory.

Conference champs collide
The Arizona Bowl is one of only two bowl games this season pitting two conference champions. The other is the College Football Playoff Semifinal between Clemson and Ohio State at the Allstate Sugar Bowl.

Ball State won the MAC Championship for the first time since 1996 by winning its last six games and taking down Buffalo in the conference title game. San Jose State went undefeated through the Mountain West Conference and beat Boise State in its championship game.

Another ranked opponent
After posting its first win over a ranked opponent since 2012 with its victory over No. 23 Buffalo in the MAC Championship Game, Ball State gets a crack at another one this week. The Cardinals are looking for back-to-back wins over ranked opponents for the first time. They have actually never played ranked opponents in consecutive games.

San Jose State is ranked No. 19 in the AP Top 25, No. 20 in the Coaches Poll and No. 22 in the College Football Playoff Rankings. For its part, Ball State is receiving votes in both the AP and coaches polls.

Preparing for tough defense
San Jose State ranks 13th nationally in scoring defense, allowing 17.9 points per game, and has not surrendered more than 24 points in a game this season. The Spartans are holding opponents to an average of 111 yards on the ground and 338 total. They boast the best defense Ball State will have faced this season, statistically. But not just statistically.

"And the film shows this is the best defense we've played," Neu said. "It starts with the guys up front. They're very good against the run. They're very good against the pass. They get after the quarterback. This is a complete defense. And really you talk about the team, this is a very balanced football team, very well-coached."

On the rise
Both of these programs have followed a similar trajectory to become conference champions. Neu's Cardinals and Brent Brennan's Spartans both won just two games in 2017 but have steadily built to this point. Both teams finished 5-7 last season, knocking on the door of bowl eligibility, before busting that door down this year.

Making history
The Arizona Bowl is the first bowl game to feature two female athletic directors -- Ball State's Beth Goetz and San Jose State's Marie Tuite -- and a female bowl director -- Kym Adair. Caitlin Schmidt of the Arizona Daily Star detailed the noteworthy happening.

There are 11 female ADs at the FBS level, and four of those are in the MAC: Goetz, Amy Folan of Central Michigan, Julie Cromer of Ohio and Kathy Beauregard of Western Michigan.

Versus the Mountain West
Ball State and San Jose State will be meeting for the first time. BSU is playing its first game against the Mountain West Conference since the league began operations in 1999.

The Cardinals played three of the league's teams -- all in bowl games -- before the formation of the MWC. The Cardinals squared off with Fresno State in the 1989 California Raisin Bowl, Utah State in the 1993 Las Vegas Bowl and Nevada in the 1996 Las Vegas Bowl.

Ball State was originally scheduled to play a Mountain West opponent this season, but the Cardinals' home game with Wyoming was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not your typical bowl prep
In a typical year, teams would have somewhere in the neighborhood of a month to prepare for a bowl game. Not so this year. The Arizona Bowl comes 13 days after Ball State last took the field in the MAC Championship Game. It feels more like a welcome late-season bye week. In this sprint of a season, the Cardinals played seven times in 45 days between their Nov. 4 opener and the Dec. 18 MAC Championship Game.

"When you play what we've played so far without really having a bye week, guys need a couple extra days here to get bumps and bruises healed up the best they can," Neu said. "There are guys selling out week in and week out who are simply sore and banged up. It's really been helpful that way to have a couple extra days off."

Offerpad Arizona Bowl Primer: Conference Champs Collide

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