For the fourth week in a row, opponents of Western Athletic Conference teams
did better than opponents of Mountain West Conference teams.
In this season's initial weeks, wins by the MWC teams, such as Utah's win
over Michigan and BYU's win over UCLA, were heralded and sent both near the
"top of the charts". A lot of time has passed since then.
We now know that this is the worst Michigan team in its 129-year history.
This year's UCLA team isn't much better.
Boise State's win over Oregon was ridiculed because they might not be as good
as thought. They could be right there. But Boise State's win over
Southern Mississippi was also put down. Then Southern Mississippi beat
East Carolina 21-3. Yeah, the one that beat mighty Virginia Tech and West Virginia, the darlings of the east coast media. Then Texas Tech, which
beat Nevada of the WAC 35-17, rose to the #2 ranking in the country.
Missouri, another opponent of Nevada, is now #13 in the country and winning
regularly. Rutgers, an early season victim of Fresno State, blew away
South Florida, a team so good they were ranked in the top 10 at the start of the
year, 49-16. Florida, an early season opponent of Hawai'i, is not doing
badly either.
Meanwhile, MWC opponents Iowa State, Texas A & M, Michigan, Utah State,
New Mexico State, Arizona State, Idaho, Washington and SMU lose, lose again, and
then lose some more.
Now folks are rethinking the argument that the Mountain West has a tougher
schedule than the WAC. If they did, their opponents wouldn't lose week
after week after week. This past weekend, non-conference opponents of Utah
lost two of three games and all non-conference opponents of MWC schools had a
dismal record of 7-17. Meanwhile, opponents of Boise State were 2-1 and
all non-conference opponents of WAC schools were 13-9. Quite a difference.
Obviously, the talking heads in the media were wrong when they said that
Mountain West opponents were better than WAC opponents. The question
is: Will the voters in the USA Today Coaches' Poll and Harris Poll notice?