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LOGAN — With just one week of college football remaining, the Aggies are hoping this week, more than ever, for one last victory that would push them to a bowl game next month.
A bowl game would be a big accomplishment, given the Aggies' significant turnover this season. Most Group of Five teams are and should be happy to make a bowl game to pit their team against another from a different corner of the United States.
Aggies head coach Blake Anderson has been open about how beneficial a bowl game could be for their program.
"(A bowl game) is within reach. If it is something that we can do, we're going to have to earn it," Anderson said, adding that for this season, all things considered, "getting bowl eligible would be a huge, huge accomplishment and a great step for the future."
One thing is clear, though: The success of the current season or future seasons for the Aggies does not hang on a victory this weekend. The difference between a 5-7 season and a 6-6 one is not so different in the grand scheme of things.
The Aggies have some work to do if they want to compete and win conference championships like they did in 2021. A bowl game will not immediately help them to jump to conference-contending outcomes. Reaching a lower-tier bowl may certainly be beneficial in a multitude of ways for most programs — including the extra practices — but it will likely not substantially affect the future of a 6-6 team.
Take last year's Aggies team, for example. After going 6-6 in the regular season and qualifying for the First Responder Bowl, which they ended up losing to Memphis, the Aggies lost a multitude of players. Any momentum the team had from reaching a bowl game was quickly squashed.
In fact, the roster losses were so severe that Anderson opted to cancel the team's spring game due to a lack of personnel. The bowl game was probably still beneficial, but it was not the saving grace that Utah State or any .500 team hopes it to be.
The bowl payouts, though also beneficial, are often linked with a variety of conditions, such as purchasing a few thousand seats at the game, which may not be filled, or staying in partner hotels for a half-dozen nights.
To put things in perspective, it is likely Utah State's regular-season trip to Tuscaloosa last season, in which they were paid almost $2 million to play Alabama, was more than two times more profitable than a bowl appearance.
So, for a young program with its sights set on championships, the answer to their struggles is not as simple as a bowl game.
After Boise State beat Utah State Saturday, Anderson pointed to how vital the offseason will be in helping his team match up physically to other Mountain West teams — something that will take patience, and surely will not be a quick fix.
"We've got better football ahead of us, hopefully this week, but definitely in the future," Anderson said. "So we want the same things the fans want. We want to be competitive every week, we want to win championships, we want to go to bowl games. Sometimes it's not a quick and easy process."
Though the team and fans alike hope to have Utah State relevant on Selection Sunday, the focus will quickly be on Dec. 4 when the transfer portal opens. The biggest win that Utah State could get in December would be to keep a majority of the roster intact for next year.
