Perhaps this new era beginning in 2013 will be the start of a good, more stable run for the Mountain West. They won the battle for survival in the West—the WAC folded up shop and its best teams folded into the Mountain West, giving the league 12 teams, two divisions and a conference championship game.
The Mountain West Conference’s West Division is split into two evenly divided classes—there are three teams for whom you can make an almost equally credible case to win the division and advance to this new-look conference’s first-ever league championship game. And there are three teams for whom no reasonable case can be made.
The progress of the Boise State program over the last ten years is such that now when the Broncos go 10-2, as they did last year, but fail to make a BCS game or win the conference championship outright (they shared a three-way crown), and just nip a power-conference team (Washington) in a bowl game, it’s treated with a certain amount of ho-hum.