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It was not a pretty night for non-BCS teams across the country last night, particularly those going up against BCS conference schools. It could have been worse- nobody lost to a FCS school, although some tried. A quick rundown of last night’s action follows. Lots of good stuff lined up for today- Friday night football preview and weekend previews for four conferences, at the very least. Happy College Colors Day. Flags up! We’re halfway through looking at just one night worth of football, and we have 14 weeks of this goodness. Ahh, feels nice, right? Ok, back to your previews. Once again, all times eastern, lines from Vegas.com, and rankings are from the coaches poll. 8:00 PM- Florida Atlantic at UAB: This is the only game of the night featuring two non-BCS opponents going at it. Both teams have question marks, with UAB trying to replace QB Joe Webb, and FAU replacing just about everything but the quarterback. UAB should have a substantial edge here, but these types of games are hard to read in week 1. Line: UAB by 14. That seems generous- for FAU. UAB won the same game last year by 27, and I think they might do it again. 8:00 PM, Regional TV- Northern Illinois at Iowa State: NIU is hoping that this game is the coming out party for a big 2010 season. They’re stacked and the favorite to win the MAC, but ISU won’t be a pushover game just because they aren’t a national power. That said, if the Cyclones are looking ahead to Iowa, they could find themselves in trouble. Line: Iowa State by 4.5. I like NIU’s chances of winning this game a lot. I like their chances of keeping within four even more, I’d take NIU plus the points. 8:00 PM- Southeastern Louisiana (FCS) at Tulane: The SE Louisiana Lions went 6-5 in 2009. Tulane better win this one, because they’re not going to get much of a chance against Ole Miss, Houston, or Rutgers. Or many other teams after that. No line. The Mountain West Conference has been rocked by realignment in the last six months, both coming and going. Boise State joined up and, for a brief moment, it seemed like a BCS autobid might be in the cards. Then Utah bowed out, heading to join the Pac-Whatever with Colorado. Now, being formally announced as I write this, BYU has made it official that they will be independent next year. We know that Fresno State & Nevada are coming along shortly as well, but they certainly aren’t BYU & Utah. The MWC is now at a somewhat clunky 10 teams, so the question is whether or not they’ll move to find two more or adopt a nine game schedule. For 2010, however, everybody’s still hunting for the last MWC championship in the BYU/Utah Era. TCU has the target on its back, after sweeping the league last year and earning an invite to the Fiesta Bowl. They’re stacked again this year and the consensus league favorite. Highly rated Utah will be challenger #1, and all eyes will be on their stadium when TCU visits on November 6. BYU can never be counted out, but a rebuilding process looks to have them a step below the top two this year. Air Force has lost a lot of players, but the skill guys are back and they’re looking to supplant BYU in the top echelon. Read PostFootball on the Fringe Season Previews were ranked, then delivered in random order. Ahh, we come to Utah. By now, it’s not news that Utah has joined the Pac-10, being the first non-BCS team to jump to the big 6 since the Big East raids. As such, this is the last year that Utah will get any attention from this blog, but we’ll be rooting for them once they get out there- if Utah makes a good showing, that’s good for the reputation of all our leagues. I don’t know for sure how MWC territory has responded to their departure, although I suppose it’s a little cheap that the logos of the Pac-10 teams appear in the Utah media guide long before the MWC schools. But this is a 2010 season preview, so onward. 2009 would go down as a great season for at least 45 of the teams we cover here- 10-3 with wins over Louisville and California in the Poinsettia Bowl. They took BYU to overtime, but the loss meant they dropped to third in the Mountain West, the conference they won the year before. 2010 sees the Utes return with sophomore starting QB Jordan Wynn and 6 other offensive starters. The defensive side is more depleted, with only 4 starters returning. It helps that all four are considered All-Conference candidates. The 2008 Season was a difficult one to top for the Mountain West, but they are poised to do so as the bowl season arrives. TCU has climbed to never-before-seen heights for a non-BCS school in the modern era, while Utah and BYU have once again put together very good seasons. Wyoming and UNLV made modest turnarounds, and even teams that struggled can find a highlight or two from the season to try and build on. So here, in reverse order of my final regular season power ranking, is a look at the 2009 Mountain West season. We conclude our look at the college football’s penultimate weekend with the MWC (it only took me 12 weeks to figure out that putting up WAC/MWC posts while they were still sleeping was a dumb idea). TCU has completed its march to the BCS, with enough ground over Boise State to know they have the automatic bid for well placed non-BCS teams sealed. The Holy War went to overtime, and the Border War ended with a bowl bid for the winner. The MWC is the only non-BCS league that is actually finished for the regular season. They’re also the only league in America to have their league table sort out perfectly- every team beat each team below them on the standings (except CSU, who beat nobody), and every team lost to each team above them (except unbeaten TCU, obviously). Read Post With fairly light schedules consisting of mostly conference games, I’m going to consolidate the wrapups for a couple weeks at least. The main reason is that starting tomorrow, I’m launching Mid-Season Report Cards for every single non-BCS conference teams, which should be fun. We also have a very busy week of night games, so there’s a lot to look forward to all week long. The MWC jumps into conference play this weekend with some really big games, and the non-conference games see MWC teams facing some big names from back east. Let’s look at the final conference of the week before we settle in for a big weekend of games: While there were some bright spots, this was a disastrous weekend for much of the MWC. Utah and BYU both probably lost their chances for BCS glory, Wyoming got shut out by a previously dreadful Colorado team, and San Diego State continues to struggle, losing to Idaho. On the bright side, Colorado State advances to 3-0 with a win over Nevada, and UNLV knocked off Hawaii with a last minute touchdown. Let’s look more at the week that was in the West: Read Post |
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