Mountain West Conference Football

What’s up with the Mountain West Conference?

You know, just a few days ago I was singing the praises of the Mountain West Conference, and I even went so far as to say that they are better than the Big East and ACC because they had (at that time) three ranked teams.

My, how much changes in one week.

With teams like Utah, BYU and TCU, and sprinkle in some Air Force, I really thought this conference was better than the WAC and Boise State. When you have three teams out of your conference on the top 25, and you are not a power conference, that is awesome!

But what happened? I would have bet my last peanut butter and jelly sandwich that BYU was going to rout Florida State, and I CERTAINLY didn’t see a 54-28 smashing in BYU’s own living room.

And Utah losing at home to Oregon helps Boise State feel bigger than the Mountain West, since they beat Oregon at the beginning of the year.

With all the Mountain West teams 3 games in except TCU, only two teams remain that are undefeated: the afore-mentioned TCU and Colorado State, who at the moment is 3-0.

This is odd because this is a very tough conference, and if Colorado State is currently 3-0, with Utah just falling out the top 25, and TCU undefeated, with BYU still on the rankings, this to me is still a very tough conference…ok let’s not bring up that New Mexico is 0-3.

So the question might be, is this conference for real, or are they all pretenders to the BCS Buster Crown? Again, many will swear by Boise State, but I still think the WAC is not as competitive as the Mountain West.

Yes Boise State beat Oregon…at home, but outside of that, few see their schedule as competitive to the end. Look at the schedule of the Mountain West Conference and key games:

Air Force: Played at Minnesota, will play at Navy, home to TCU, away to Utah and Colorado State, and BYU.

BYU: Played away at Oklahoma, home to Florida State and Colorado State and TCU, Air Force and Utah.

Colorado State: Played away at Colorado, away to BYU, home to Utah, away to TCU and home to Air Force

New Mexico: Played away at Texas A&M, home to Air Force, away to Texas Tech and Utah, home to BYU and away to TCU

San Diego State: Away at UCLA and Air Force, home to BYU, away to Colorado State, home to TCU and way to Utah.

TCU: Away at Virginia and Clemson, Air Force and BYU, home to Utah.

UNLV: Home to Oregon State, BYU, Utah, away to TCU and Air Force.

Utah: Away at Oregon, home to Louisville, away to Colorado State, home to Air Force, away to TCU and BYU.

Folks, that is a competitive schedule.

It’s a shame that the old WAC super conference can’t get back together, when they had 16 teams. This would have ended a lot of talk about BCS Busters and stuff like that when you had teams like Boise State, Utah, BYU and TCU all fighting for one crown before stating a case for a BCS Championship. But as it stands, this Mountain West Conference is indeed a tough conference.

Sure, one loss hurts Utah and BYU a ton, in fact it kicked Utah out of one poll. So it might appear that the pride of the conference rests on TCU, or maybe Colorado State, since they need an undefeated team to make a serious charge at the BCS. I am not as confident in the Rams as I am in Horned Frogs, but both are still undefeated at the moment, after Saturday we will know much more about this conference.

I still think that IF a team goes undefeated in the MWC, they deserve serious consideration at a BCS Title IF there are no undefeated teams out of the BCS conferences. I mean, if people talk about Boise State getting that shot, why not TCU or Colorado State, if they go undefeated?

But there is still much to see, many more games to play, time will tell all.