Written by Matt Zemek at Bloguin
Mountains are meant to cast shadows over a landscape, but this season, the Mountain West is standing in the shadows, all while the American Athletic Conference becomes the best Group of Five league by a country mile.
It’s an unwelcome turn of events in the Rocky Mountains and areas beyond. The league which once had every reason to puff out its chest in early January is now a shell of its former self.
It’s true that Boise State gave the league more glory in the 2014-2015 bowl season, decking Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl to uphold its reputation as an elite Fiesta Bowl program. Yet, Boise State defeated a nothingburger Fresno State side in the Mountain West Conference Championship Game, the product of yet another pronounced split in quality between two divisions in a conference. If the SEC East and Big Ten West suffered last year in comparison with their much stronger in-league divisions, the Mountain West’s West Division inhabited the same identity relative to the Mountain West’s Mountain Division.
Boise State won the Mountain in 2014, but Utah State, Colorado State, and Air Force all turned in high-level seasons as well. There was reason to hope that after the departures of Utah, TCU and BYU — which all detracted from what was a very credentialed (and fun) league — the Mountain West had found stable replacements, teams that could carry the banner for years to come.
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