The Mountain West Win Again

It's hard to figure out what to make of bowl ones, but one thing I can asses thus far from the 2009 Bowl season is that the Mountain West are looking pretty legit.

First Wyoming upset Fresno State, now more impressively, BYU dominated Pac 10 #3, and BCS #18 Oregon State. At this point Utah and Air Force still need to win their Bowl games, but there's a great chance that the Mountain West comes out of the 2009 Bowl season 5-0.

If the Mountain West teams pull that off, capped by a TCU victory over Boise State, it's going to be hard not to consider the Mountain West a major conference; Making it even harder to repel the conference from an automatic BCS bid every season.

I would definitely agree with anyone who said that the Mountain West from top to bottom really isn't that great, and you need a few somewhat bigger universities to step in and replace schools like San Diego State, New Mexico, and Colorado State. Those teams would do well in Conference USA or the WAC. If you could replace them with Boise State (who are looking to move conferences), SMU (who have the money, and are rivals with TCU), and maybe even a program like San Jose State, you'd have a conference that you could at least say from top to bottom has the tools necessary to compete with the major conferences.

I suppose we'll have to let the Bowl series play out before we can make any further judgement. But at least BYU's big win over Oregon State washes away the stain of their thrashing at the hands of Florida State earlier in the season.