The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Mountain West Media Days

We have less than a month before college football kicks off and we know the season is officially close when media days start to take place. Mountain West media days may have seemed a bit uneventful, but there were some key takeaways from the two day event. Here are my good, bad, and ugly moments from Las Vegas.

The Good:

Parity

Five teams received first place votes (Boise State, Wyoming, Nevada, San Jose State, Fresno State). The race in the West is especially tight where five of the six teams have realistic hopes of appearing in the conference title game (sorry UNLV fans). In the Mountain, Wyoming has a favorable schedule and hopes to unseat the favorite, Boise State, who has appeared in four consecutive conference championship games.

The Bad:

Parity Again

While parity can be a good thing, it can also look a lot like mediocrity. The Mountain West has had some really solid teams in recent seasons, but they haven’t had a great team. This has caused the American to pull away as the better conference. The Mountain West really needs one of these teams to pull ahead and make a run for a New Years Six game.

San Jose State Disrespect

The defending champions did get five first place votes, but for a team that was fairly dominant on their way to a championship, I expected more. The Spartans return their starting quarterback and are expected to have one of the best defensive lines in the country. For a team with so much returning production, the media is sure selling them short.

The Ugly:

Nick Starkell’s Comments

One of the things that kind of flew under the radar from media days were comments that San Jose State quarterback Nick Starkell made about the cancelled Boise State game. Starkell accused Boise State of letting players go home for Thanksgiving which resulted in COVID issues within the team. Boise State and players on the team have since refuted these accusations. That is kind of a dangerous statement to make without knowing the facts.

That’s it for this edition of “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.” Next week, I will preview my predicted order of finish for the Mountain Division.