Housekeeping Items.

Here at MWCConnection, we strive to provide the best coverage of the Mountain West Conference that we possibly can.

With that being said, I noticed some reoccurring misconceptions or misunderstandings between the writers and readers of the site. There are things even avid readers of the site may not be aware of, mainly because we do not specifically state them often, so they are easier to miss. This is an attempt to clear some things up and get on the same page. I will probably re-run this each year.

The Staff Make-up

We do have a relatively large team of writers with various styles and points of interest. However, this is not a full-time job for any of us. As you can imagine, writers are being given little to no money for their contributions (constantly trying to change that). Every one of us has something outside of a site that is more pressing, whether that is a full-time job, school, or a family. Going off of that, a number of our writers are college students honing their craft and may not have been following the history of the Mountain West or its teams as long as some of you, the readers. While we are not perfect with our thoughts or coverage, I can assure you everyone works extremely hard on their writing.

Not covering a team as much as other teams does not mean we hate that team.

It is important to know how our site is structured. The vast majority of our staff are assigned to write about a specific team. These team writers are usually fans of that team, and some even attend the school. Our goal is always to have a writer for each of the 12 teams, but people come and go for various reasons, and it’s hard to keep or replace writers at times. Not having a writer for a team isn’t for lack of effort and at the time of this writing, I’m happy to say we are starting the season with one writer for every team.

We don’t choose to intentionally not cover certain teams, and we don’t purposely prioritize one team over another. Our writers flow in and out of content, especially in the off-season. Just because one writer can’t post as much as another, we aren’t going to limit the more frequent writer. It is understandable how that can be mistaken for prioritizing content for one team over another, but that is not the case. Every writer is given the same basic expectations (weekly game previews and recaps during football season), with the opportunity to do more when possible and has more free reign during the off-season, and everyone’s available time and desire to write looks a bit different.

The Elephant in the Room: Boise State

Half of our readers think we cover Boise State entirely too much and do nothing but praise them. The other half of our readers think we hate the Broncos and snub the team and the players every chance we get. It is funny how people can read the same site and come to vastly different conclusions. I examine this phenomenon and say we must be doing something right if both sides of the debate are upset.

The truth is, we view Boise State as we do any other team, contrary to popular belief. However, whether people love them or hate them, they are a good program. They have their flaws, they get some special treatment, and they also don’t win as much as they should. That all being said, they are more newsworthy than the average team, and when the news is occurring, they will get covered. It is also a fact that one of our more frequent writers writes about Boise State (but so do our Air Force, Hawaii, and SJSU writers. I have yet to hear any complaints about the frequency of their posts).

People may not realize it, but we do our best to promote those doing well or the bigger storylines. This site highlighted the surprisingly good recruiting classes San Jose State was accumulating even when they weren’t winning. We did a mini-series on how New Mexico should rebuild its program two summers ago. We had tons of content on San Diego State during their March Madness run. This past off-season, weekly columns were dedicated to New Mexico, Boise State, UNLV, Wyoming, and San Jose State.

Overall, we have been fortunate to have always had a Boise State writer. While it is good we have had consistent content, it is not meant to be at the expense of consistent content for other teams. We aren’t going to tell our BSU writer not to write something just because we won’t have a corresponding post for another team. For those who enjoy reading it, great. For those who don’t, you can always wait for the next post.

Disagreeing Respectfully

None of us are going to pretend that all of our ideas and opinions are infallible. Sometimes we are right, sometimes we are wrong, but we base our posts on educated thoughts and opinions. Sometimes we are going to praise a team you hate and critique your favorite team. Does that mean we hate your team, or we are idiots? It does not.

Spoiler: Not everyone’s favorite team can go 12-0 with a conference championship. It’s okay if you’re team is critiqued and seen as imperfect. It’s okay if you disagree with some of the points. Fan how you want to fan, but let’s keep it in perspective. I have my opinions, and some end up being way off base. I do my best to admit when I am wrong. Fresno State in 2018, AFA in 2019, SJSU in 2020, and Utah State in 2021 come to mind as things I was wrong about.

I also remember being told directly (and in some cases rudely) how wrong we were and how we needed to do more research concerning my evaluations of some other teams. However, the facts remain that: Not picking UNLV to go to a bowl game in 2019 wasn’t because we were sleeping on them. Utah State was not a better team without Jordan Love. Wyoming was not better after losing Josh Allen. Boise State did not look like a NY6 contender in 2022.

The point is that fans of a team will think higher of the team than the average person, and just because someone has an opinion that fans don’t like does not mean they are wrong. It also doesn’t make them automatically correct.

Also, join the discussion by commenting on our articles. Interacting on Twitter and Facebook is great and we want to keep that going. But we also want to start interacting more directly on our website and in order to do that, we would like you to start commenting on our posts with some of your thoughts on our writing.

To conclude, this isn’t meant to call anyone out, but hopefully for everyone to give our posts and opinions more context and perspective. We try as hard as we can to make our site the best it can be and will continue to do so. Hopefully, all who read this post learned something, and I hope to learn something about some of you from any comments you leave explaining your perspective.