A look at our Competition - Conferences

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Ok folks, a year ago we were being courted by the WAC and some people were miffed when we turned them down. So far, the WAC and the Belt are very similar this season. The WAC's standings look like this:

Western Athletic

Team Conf. W-L Overall W-L

Fresno St. 0-0 1-0

San Jose St. 0-0 1-1

Louisiana Tech 0-0 0-1

Nevada 0-0 0-1

Utah St. 0-0 0-1

Boise St. 0-0 0-2

Hawaii 0-0 0-2

Idaho 0-0 0-2

New Mex. St. 0-0 0-2

They have had two wins (as a group), neither were against IA teams... Fresno beat Weber State and San Jose beat Eastern Washington. All other games have been losses - and pretty bad ones at that. Boise State came closest to a win against Oregon State and Idaho actually gave UNLV a fight, only losing by 3 or 4.

The Belt isn't much better, we even have a team that lost to a IAA team (ULM lost to NW State, the same team that knocked off TCU a couple of years ago). But we do have three wins from our group of 8 and one team with a IA win out of the early conference opener:

Sun Belt

Team Conf. W-L Overall W-L

North Texas 1-0 1-0

Arkansas St. 0-0 1-1

Troy 0-0 1-1

FIU 0-0 0-2

Florida Atlantic 0-0 0-2

La.-Lafayette 0-0 0-2

Louisiana-Monroe 0-0 0-2

M. Tenn. St. 0-1 0-2

As for the other peer conferences, the MAC has more IA wins then anyone @ 4 - simply because they started conference play in week 2 which accounts for half of their IA wins at this point. Out of the group of them (12 schools) they have 2 OOC IA wins, over Pitt and the UL Cajuns. The other wins were either over IAA teams or each other.

Mid American

East Conf. W-L Overall W-L

Bowling Green 1-0 1-1

Kent St. 0-0 1-1

Ohio 0-0 1-1

Akron 0-0 0-1

Buffalo 0-0 0-2

Miami (Ohio) 0-1 0-2

West Conf. W-L Overall W-L

Toledo 1-0 2-0

C. Michigan 1-0 1-1

E. Michigan 0-0 1-1

Northern Illinois 0-0 0-2

Ball St. 0-1 0-2

W. Michigan 0-1 0-2

Finally, the new (and improved?) CUSA - they are doing pretty good actually. ECU has a win over Duke, Marshall beat W&M and SHOULD have beat K-State if their bonehead coach had just kicked the fieldgoal with 8 second left rather then try to score a TD (they were down by two points and the QB threw an interception) - UAB beat Troy, UTEP beat NMSU, while Houston beat Sam Houston and SMU upset a hot TCU team at home for the iron skillet to win their 1st OOC game since the year 2000 (it was also their 1st win over a ranked team in 20 years)

Conference USA

East Conf. W-L Overall W-L

East Carolina 0-0 1-0

Marshall 0-0 1-1

UAB 0-0 1-1

Central Florida 0-0 0-1

Memphis 0-0 0-1

Southern Miss 0-0 0-1

West Conf. W-L Overall W-L

UTEP 0-0 1-0

Houston 0-0 1-1

SMU 0-0 1-1

Tulane 0-0 0-0

Rice 0-0 0-1

Tulsa 0-0 0-2

As for the MWC - they are close to BCS quality now - not having any trouble with OOC games at all. Their nine teams have all played both weeks, for a total of 18 games - winning over 50% of them (10 of them). They have truly separated themselves from the rest of the non-auto bid conferences.

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Basically, it looks like it will be the Belt vs the WAC for the bottom rung this year. We can still pass up the MAC and CUSA if they hit the skids; but the early results point towards another "growing" and "rebuilding" year for the Belt but the WAC isn't much better off and could possibly be even worse.