Well, college football fans, another week (or so) has gone by and here we are again – getting to talk about the best sport in the world. Some schools are starting to have players and coaches hit by Covid. A friend asked me if the GCR was going to do a post on that (pretty sure he was drunk at the time), and the answer is…not right now. Let’s see what happens. My plan is to finish this series – this is the 9th installment – and see what the story is then. Today is the most difficult Group of 5 conferences and the 7th and 6th hardest in the country. In a few days, I’ll have a sum up of the G5 teams. Following that, the next 5 episodes will be the Power 5 conferences – one per episode. Then I’ll have a sum up for them followed by a comparison of all schools by month (Aug/Sept, Oct, Nov/Dec). All of that to say we are 82 days from the first scheduled game for this year and at least 6-7 weeks from finishing this series. By then, I am hopeful we’ll know more about what’s going to happen.
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Let’s jump right in. In 7th place is the Mountain West Conference cleverly divided into the Mountain and West Divisions. The 12 teams averaged a 6.403 adjusted opponent’s win total. Last year, Boise St (yes, again), Hawaii, San Diego St, and Air Force all had strong seasons. Let’s look at the table and see if the projected SOS helps us understand the potential for 2020.
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UNLV and San Jose St are taking big leaps in their SOS and are coming off losing seasons. Life could be rough. Wyoming may fall off the 8-win mark next year by facing tougher competition. Nevada could sneak up with the 2nd easiest (behind UAB) FBS schedule, but I see nothing that fundamentally shifts the power of this impactful conference. The winner of Boise St at Air Force will more than likely face the winner of Hawaii at San Diego St for the championship. And that brings us to…
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The leader of the Group of 5, the (now) 11-team American Athletic Conference averaging a score of 6.856. There are no divisions since UConn decided/was decided to go independent. Losing the team made this difficult conference more competitive. Here’s the chart and look at the number of toughest games that are in italics – that means that game is a conference game.
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5 teams won at least 10 games and perennial threat Houston had a down year. UCF didn’t even make the championship game. For the most part last year’s final SOS lines up nicely with 2020 projected, so I see another horse race among the have’s. Houston, unless they made some changes, may have passed their prime. If I were a betting man, and you know I’m not, I would put money on the Group of 5 New Year’s Six Bowl bid going to the winner of the battle that is the AAC.
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That’s it for now. Thank you for reading and please comment or send questions. As always I appreciate your sharing the site with others. G
