Armed Forces big fan of AFA

The Armed Forces Bowl wantsAirForce tobeoneof its teams this winter, but it’s not certain if enough strings can be pulled to bring the Falcons to Fort Worth, Texas, to play in the Jan. 2 game.

Because the Armed Forces Bowl isn’t one of the six postseason games affiliated with the Mountain West, it would take somework with the conference to allow Air Force to accept an invitation.

The Armed Forces Bowl has attempted to set up a rotation among Army, Air Force andNavy to bring one of the service academies to FortWorth each year. Army was supposed to play there this winter, but the Black Knightswon’t have the necessary six victories to be eligible for a bowl game. Navy already has accepted an invitation to play in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego, leaving Air Force (9-3) the lone possibility to represent the service academies in FortWorth.

A spokesperson for the Armed Forces Bowl, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Sunday, “We’d be thrilled and honored to be able to invite the Air Force Academy. We have significant interest in having a service-academy team play in our game.”

The Mountain West has agreements to place six of its members in bowl games. The Las Vegas Bowl gets the first pick of available teams. The other five— the Poinsettia Bowl, the Hawaii Bowl in Honolulu, the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in Boise and the New Orleans Bowl— enter into discussions to fill their slots. The Las Vegas, New Mexico, New Orleans and Boise bowl games will be played Dec. 20. The Poinsettia Bowl is Dec. 23 and the Hawaii Bowl is Dec. 24.

The Poinsettia Bowl is expected to pick San Diego State to playNavy.

Heading into the Mountain West championship game — Fresno State plays Saturday at Boise State — the conference has seven bowl-eligible teams.

However, if Boise State wins the conference championship game it could move up to a higher-level bowl.