On the day that the College Football Playoff committee announced the semifinal pairings (kudos to the committee for getting everything right — including no immediate Ohio State-Michigan rematch, thank you very much), the Odyssey is till lamenting the anti-best: ie, a terrible down year for the Mountain West.
Fresno State won the title by winning at Boise State. Let’s consider two incredible blots on the resumes of the division winners. Fresno State lost at UConn, albeit with no Jake Haener. Boise State got smoked at UTEP. Two telling faceplants. At least Fresno had an excuse. Haener is a helluva quarterback. Boise’s upset at El Paso was considered so seismic that the offensive coordinator was fired and the starting QB, Hank Bachmeier, immediately went into the transfer portal.
Four of the conference teams were beyond terrible: Hawaii, Colorado State, New Mexico and Nevada were all utterly embarrassing. Wyoming might have had a decent team this year but the Cowboys were one of the biggest losers in the transfer portal. We fear that both the portal and NIL will continue to be an enemy of the Mountain West.
San Diego State’s offense was so awful in the first half of the year that the Aztecs had to resort to a converted Safety to be a partial solution at QB in the 2nd half of the campaign. Even so, SDSU scored only 3 points in its finale against Air Force. The Aztecs have been a flagship program for the conference over the past decade, noted by their frequent successes against the Pac12. In 2022, SDSU was easily swept aside by both Arizona and Utah.
We hope the Mountain West is stronger in 2023 but are worried about the growing gap between the “have” and “have not” conferences.