Boise State’s quest for Mountain West three-peat begins with ‘huge game’
Boise State football has a chance this weekend to get back to familiar territory: a winning record overall and in conference play.
The Broncos (1-1) lost their opener — a nonconference game at South Florida — and rebounded with a blowout win over FCS opponent Eastern Washington. Now the two-time defending Mountain West champion travels to Colorado Springs to take on Air Force (1-1) in the conference opener.
“This is a huge game for us,” redshirt junior quarterback Maddux Madsen said Tuesday. “Everything that we have going forward, we need to win these games.”
The Broncos are vying for a third straight Mountain West title in their final year in the conference, before they and four other schools jump to the revived Pac-12.
Redshirt senior linebacker Marco Notarainni said the conference opener feels akin to the season opener, but he also said the Broncos must not make it feel too big. Like many of his teammates, Notarainni was part of the teams that won league championships in 2023 and ‘24, the program’s first since 2019.
“I definitely want to end my career finishing out on another conference championship win,” Notarainni said. “So starting off strong with Air Force, a really good team, and getting that win is super important.”
One player who hasn’t tasted the thrill of conference championships, despite doing plenty of winning, is redshirt junior safety Jaden Mickey, who transferred to Boise State from Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish, last season’s national runner-up, are not part of a conference for football.
He said earlier this week that competing for a league title gives him a “different sense of motivation” heading into the Air Force game. Mickey played just one snap in the Broncos’ opening loss to South Florida, but was one of the defensive stars a week later in the home opener.
“At Notre Dame, it’s kind of national championship or nothing. But here, even if you lose a game, you still can fight for that other championship,” Mickey said. “And obviously, we still want to get into the playoffs and the national championship is still a big goal, but that conference championship is big, too.”
The game also holds some significance because it’s the last time that Boise State and Air Force will play for the foreseeable future. The two teams have battled it out, often at the top of the conference, for the better part of 15 years, but the Falcons are not one of the teams moving to the new Pac-12.
Boise State leads the series 8-4 and has been dominant lately, winning six of the past seven. The last time Air Force won was on The Blue in 2021, when the Falcons left Boise with a 24-17 victory.
Head coach Spencer Danielson, who has coached against Air Force in all seven of those games in some capacity, said he might touch on the matchup’s history — but only to a degree.
“I don’t get into too much of that with our team,” Danielson said. “Like last year, it wasn’t like, ‘This is the last time we’re playing Wyoming.’ It was like, ‘We’re playing Wyoming now and we’re going to focus on that.’ No different for our team. We’re playing Air Force now, and get your mind right.”
Boise State at Air Force
- When: 5 p.m. Saturday
- Where: Falcon Stadium (39,441, turf), Colorado Springs
- TV: FS1 (Jason Knapp, Robert Turbin)
- Radio: KBOI 670 AM/KTIK 93.1 FM (Bob Behler, Pete Cavender)
- Records: Boise State 1-1; Air Force 1-1
- Series: Boise State leads 8-4
- Vegas betting line: Boise State by 11.5
- Weather: 74 degrees, partly cloudy, 15% chance of rain
