I just think that neither league is better than the other. That its a lot more balanced than people think and balanced meaning mediocre. I think that the money that people keep throwing around isnt going to be there and even if its a few extra million dollars, youre giving Boise the benefit of the doubt while everyone else is mediocre. I think both leagues suffer from institutions that ignored football and the ones who had success early tried to leave almost a decade ago when they were relevant but havent been able to get anywhere near that since except for Boise. We spent a lot of years in that mediocrity to down right terrible but finally decided to start spending money and taking it seriously.
Ww also played a much tougher schedule than Army and Tulane. We beat 2 P4 programs on the road, we had 2 combined losses by 8 points. Our schedules were not the same and that's why with 2 losses we were able to stay in Top 25. Our conference is full of mid-tier to bottom feeders and the vaunted Pac 12 is going to be taking several of those.
Our P4 wins weren't moving the needle and you know it. We were ranked ahead of army before Kansas started their whirlwind tour of really good wins.
Mediocre yes. But we have bad teams with little hope. Their bad teams actually have a lot of hope.
Utah State under Bronco, SDSU, both have a ton of potential over nearly any MW school outside of UNLV.
Fresno was using an interim coach that we know first hand is flawed
Reno, UNM, have little hope. Hawaii's ceiling is low. AFA has a cap on their ceiling which is maybe what Navy and Army did this year, perhaps a step down from that
There is some potential at Wyoming, though it seems that the NIL era will hurt them. Not that much money there community wise.
Sjsu has been really good, but will they invest? They spend zero dollars in NIL in basketball, not sure about football. They have paid good money for coaches but does it trickle down? Their fan base doesn't care so why would they invest?
Every team in the new PAC you could realistically see in the top 25. We have 3, maybe 4 teams.
All of that adds up. SOS matters.
Then there is the money. We will see, but I thinjthey will be getting significantly more, and once they get in a couple of years, they will be racking up more NCAAT credits. Money certainly helps stay competitive. We seemingly found some willing to invest, but that is new to us, will that be there down the road if we can't strike gold again after Mullen inevitably moves on?
