Since the season is nearly 3/4 over it is time to start looking at the bowl situation of the the conference. The conference has 4 bowl tie ins.
Here is the current record of all the conference teams as of today.
Mountain West Standings |
The teams with an * most likely to become bowl eligible or all already bowl eligible and everyone knows that teams fan travel can determine who gets the bowl bids. Just look back at Wyoming last year who was 6-6 and was ahead of New Mexico in conference play but was shut out because New Mexico had their own bowl game. It is still early to tell if all of these teams will become bowl eligible such as Utah and TCU but both should become bowl eligible, which means that the conference has 6 bowl teams. There could be open spots if others do not fill their allotment but those will be focused on in the next week or 2.
Las Vegas Bowl- This should be BYU's spot even if they do not win the conference outright, the Las Vegas Bowl loves them, because of the attendance records the team sends.
Poinsettia Bowl - University of Utah, the way the Utes travel to bowl games will make the Utes attractive for this spot. Just look back to the Fiesta Bowl when the Utes sent 55,000 people which holds more then their own stadium holds.
New Mexico Bowl - This one is pretty obvious, New Mexico Lobos. This bowl would get no attendance if the Lobos do not make it. This would be New Mexico's 3rd straight bowl appearance in the bowl game, but there might be an NCAA rule about attending home bowl games in a certain number of years. That is something that will be looked into by next weeks, bowl writing. So, for now New Mexico gets this spot.
Armed Forces Bowl -This is a tough spot with TCU most likely to be bowl eligible then there is Wyoming who should be and Air Force who is all ready bowl eligible. Since bowl games are all about money and attendance what would be better then having a home team play at their own bowl game. So for this week TCU gets the nod as the bowl representative.
This will change and my predictions probably are not fully accurate, but since the conference will most likely have 6 teams be bowl eligible there is a chance other conferences could not fill their spots and those teams could be bowling else where.