A bit late, and a tad abbreviated, this week’s Mountain West Watch has a lot to cover in a short time. So let’s get into the swing of things with a look at the standings before jumping into a power ranking that saw a lot of movement in the middle and a new bottom team in the conference.
Week 12 Mountain West Standings / CFP Poll Rankings
| Rk | Team | Record | MW Record | CFP Poll |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boise State | 9-1 | 6-0 | 12th |
| 2 | Colorado State | 7-3 | 5-0 | – |
| 3 | UNLV | 8-2 | 4-1 | 24th |
| 4 | Fresno State | 5-5 | 3-3 | – |
| 5 | San Jose State | 6-4 | 3-3 | – |
| 6 | New Mexico | 5-6 | 3-3 | – |
| 7 | San Diego State | 3-7 | 2-3 | – |
| 8 | Utah State | 3-7 | 2-3 | – |
| 9 | Hawai’i | 4-7 | 2-4 | – |
| 10 | Wyoming | 2-8 | 2-4 | – |
| 11 | Air Force | 3-7 | 1-4 | – |
| 12 | Nevada | 3-8 | 0-5 | – |
The one thing still relevant in these standings remains the fact that UNLV is still hanging behind Colorado State but with nothing the Rebels can do but hope and pray that Sin City will be able to watch a second straight title game with UNLV as a participant. There was a little pushing and shoving in the middle, with Fresno State getting back to fourth in the standings and Utah State bumping Hawai’i down, but nothing major at the top (yet).
1. Boise State
- Last Week’s Rank: 1st
- Week 12 Result: 42-21 Win @ San Jose State
- This Week: @ Wyoming
Little issue for the Broncos at San Jose State. Sure, in the first half the game had its interesting moments, with the Spartans taking a 14-0 lead early in the second quarter (and even an 21-14 lead early in the third). But Boise State made sure it finished the game properly by scoring 28 unanswered points for the dominant road win, not only preserving the undefeated record but getting enough style points to still impress the playoff selection committee.
2. UNLV
- Last Week’s Rank: 2nd
- Week 12 Result: 41-20 Win vs San Diego State
- Next Game: @ San Jose State
The Rebels continue to float in something of a no-man’s zone. On the one hand, they’re pretty clearly a top team in the Mountain West, most would argue second-best. And yet they’re not really getting much talk for the playoff, having just gotten back into the top 25 rankings, and more importantly aren’t in line for a spot in the Mountain West title game. If no one in the top three loses the rest of the way, UNLV will miss out on the championship game. And that’s a crying shame considering this is basically the best-ever season in UNLV football history.
3. Colorado State
- Last Week’s Rank: 3rd
- Week 12 Result: 24-10 Win vs Wyoming
- This Week: @ Fresno State
A Border War win only adds to the legend of this overlooked, but potentially title-game-bound, Colorado State team. The Rams aren’t getting style points in their wins, but they’re getting wins. And that’s literally all that matters at this point. Colorado State isn’t getting into the playoff. But they can certainly get to the conference title game and a pretty good bowl game if they keep up the winning.
4. Fresno State
- Last Week’s Rank: 5th
- Week 12 Result: Bye
- This Week: vs Colorado State
This area of my rankings always feels like I’m putting an undeserving team too high. Hawai’i was that team previously and it looked alright up until this last week. Now I’ve moved a Fresno State team on a two-game losing streak moving up in the rankings. Make it make sense.
5. San Jose State
- Last Week’s Rank: 6th
- Week 12 Result: 21-42 Loss vs Boise State
- This Week: vs UNLV
From Boise State to UNLV, the Spartans are not getting any rest. It’s a pretty good thing they already clinched bowl eligibility since the late part of their schedule is not making getting wins very easy.
6. New Mexico
- Last Week’s Rank: 8th
- Week 12 Result: 38-35 Win vs Washington State
- This Week: Bye
The Lobos are suddenly flying after getting a win over previously ranked Washington State and have now won five of their last seven games. It’s looking like a huge turn of fortunes for Bronco Mendenhall following a 0-4 start with a lot of momentum building toward the future.
7. Hawai’i
- Last Week’s Rank: 4th
- Week 12 Result: 10-55 Loss @ Utah State
- This Week: Bye
Um…what? Hawai’i was poised to be one of the more sneaky-good teams in the Mountain West and had wins over Fresno State and a narrow defeat against UNLV to show that argument had some merit. But a trip to a mildly chilly Logan led to it all falling apart at the seams. The Warriors are now out of bowl contention and suddenly have a red-hot New Mexico team to run into for the season finale in a couple of weeks.
8. Nevada
- Last Week’s Rank: 7th
- Week 12 Result: Bye
- This Week: vs Air Force
Not much to report following a bye. The Wolf Pack simply remain near the bottom despite so many close results.
9. Utah State
- Last Week’s Rank: 10th
- Week 12 Result: 55-10 Win vs Hawai’i
- This Week: vs San Diego State
This may age poorly after this upcoming week, but a win that dominant deserves at least moving up one spot in the power rankings. Utah State looked like its fully realized self in that Hawai’i game, a balanced, dominant offense with a defense that can create chaos plays to shut down opponents. That’s what they were in 2021 when they were Mountain West champions and they looked the part last Saturday. Whether it’ll come together again on Senior Day this week will be one of the things to keep an eye on around the Mountain West.
10. San Diego State
- Last Week’s Rank: 9th
- Week 12 Result: 20-41 Loss @ UNLV
- This Week: @ Utah State
The last four games have been a brutal span for the Aztecs, who probably should be higher on this ranking but simply lack results to show any improvement they might have made. Playing Washington State, Boise State and UNLV within a four-week span will make any team look pretty bad (ask USU). But the loss to New Mexico, and managing to score just 16 points against one of the statistically worst defenses in the country, kind of puts the nail in the coffin for SDSU. But with two games left against Utah State and Air Force, there’s some respectability that might be extracted from this season.
11. Air Force
- Last Week’s Rank: 12th
- Week 12 Result: 28-0 Win vs Oregon State
- This Week: @ Nevada
Kind of like with Utah State, there’s a lot of credit that must go to Air Force for not giving up on what everyone else will call a lost season. After eight weeks of having one game scoring more than 21 points, the Falcons have done it in back-to-back games. And they’ve done it against teams that are fighting for bowl eligibility, so at least theoretically they’re far better on paper than a team that was winless against FBS teams more than a week after Halloween. This year won’t be the most well-known in Troy Calhoun’s tenure, but these two games should be remembered for how much he got out of his players in well below-average circumstances.
12. Wyoming
- Last Week’s Rank: 11th
- Week 12 Result: 10-24 Loss vs Colorado State
- This Week: Bye
A win over New Mexico (that looks quite a bit better in retrospect) isn’t enough to save Wyoming from the bottom. Sure, their most recent loss was to a team currently fighting to be in the Mountain West title game, but it felt like a return to the old Wyoming. One that can’t score and can sort of defense (but not nearly enough to cover for the lack of offense). Kaden Anderson went from being the savior from the woes of Evan Svoboda to looking a lot more like Svoboda than most would like to admit.
Boise State currently has first-round bye in College Football Playoff projection
The biggest reveal for this week’s College Football Playoff, at least from the Group of Five perspective, is that Boise State would be the No. 4 seed were the playoffs to start this week. It’s been a theoretical possibility for a while, one that national pundits have poo-pooed in their predictions, but has now come about. The reason why is that the most likely potential Big 12 champions, BYU and Colorado, now both rank behind Boise State in the rankings. BYU lost to Kansas last week, dropping them to 14th while Colorado sits at 16th. Were those rankings to hold then Boise State, as the No. 12 team, would be the fourth-best conference champion and would earn one of the four byes given to the top four conference winners.
This development, while exciting, is far from a guarantee to last. The main potential issue is that if BYU and Colorado go undefeated until facing each other in the Big 12 title game, the winner could very well leapfrog the Broncos on the strength of that win. For the Broncos to end up with that bye, they’d need one more loss from either of those teams (Arizona State is also in the mix here, but we’re not taking that deep of a dive) and for the lower ranked team to win the Big 12 championship game. That would complete the process of sending a shockwave through a college football world that never expected a G5 team to actually get a first-round bye despite it being theoretically possible.
New Mexico’s statement win and recent improvement
The Lobos were not expected by any means to pull off a victory against Washington State. Heck, most Cougar fans were probably more preoccupied with drawing up the improbably scenarios that would allow their team to end up in the College Football Playoff than by whether WSU would beat New Mexico.
By the looks of it, the Washington State team itself must have been preoccupied since it completely fell on its face in losing to New Mexico. But saying that doesn’t really give enough credit to the Lobos themselves. They’ve really upped their game late in the season and deserve credit for in-season improvement. New Mexico went from being unable to stop anyone on defense to having multiple games in the last month holding teams under 20 points. Heck, of the four times New Mexico has held a team to less than 37 points, three have now happened since Oct. 26. And, yea, that sounds like an incredibly low bar to be celebrating about, but this is a program that’s been pretty low for most of its history. Celebrating improvements is key.
A potentially massive boost would be a win next week, which would put New Mexico into a bowl game for the first time since 2016.
Also, a fun fact brought to the world’s attention by Geoff Grammer, is that New Mexico is currently the only Mountain West team to beat a ranked opponent in either football or basketball, and the Lobos have done both. And similar to what Grammer said, that’s probably not happened many times.
Barry Odom on the way out?
Benefitting from the late arrival of this article is the fact that the rumors about Barry Odom will get a bit of run here. As reported by many already, it’s believed that the head coach of UNLV is the top candidate for West Virginia. The source of this rumor is a social media account specializing in West Virginia-related content. It lies in the realm of probably believable, but don’t call it official until more credible reporters confirm the news.
BREAKING 🚨Sources have indicated that WVU plans to hire UNLV’s Barry Odom to replace Neal Brown at the end of the season.Wren Baker and Barry Odom worked together at Missouri in 2016.UNLV is 17-7 under Odom and currently ranked 23rd. pic.twitter.com/Bqw8MvvWJt
— The Collective (@247_Collective) November 20, 2024
There’s already rampant speculation about who Odom’s next employer will be. Since he’s a G5 coach who’s had very visible success lately he’s the exact type that will get poached by P4 programs looking to make a good hire. This rumor just gives a specific landing spot.
There’s no reason to spend too much time with hand-wringing over why Odom may want to leave. Yes, there’s been NIL drama that made the early season a bit spicier than it should have been. Yes, the Mountain West is taking a hit with outgoing teams. But the future of UNLV still had every chance of being bright, especially several years down the road if it eventually opted to make a late jump to the Pac-12 after current grant of rights deals expire. Odom is (maybe) leaving for pretty much the same reasons every other coach leaves: money and ambition. Coaches seek to win at the highest levels and getting paid handsomely only adds more motivation.
Still, it could end up being a very sore day for UNLV fans if these rumors end up being true (which, sadly they too often are. USU fans can relate).
