Mountain West Football: MWwire’s 2023 Preseason Projected Order of Finish
Our writers put their heads together to predict how the 2023 Mountain West football season will ultimately shake out.
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Goodbye, divisions. Hello, top two.
Mountain West Wire’s 2023 preseason honors:
All-Conference Teams | Offensive Player of the Year | Defensive Player of the Year | Special Teams Player of the Year | Freshman of the Year | Newcomer of the Year | Coach of the Year | Coordinator of the Year
It’s a brave new world for Mountain West football in 2023: After a decade with the Mountain and West divisions, the conference has moved to a “top two” format that will determine who will play for the championship going forward.
Order of Finish
Boise State – 94 points (six first-place votes)
Fresno State – 81 points (two first-place votes)
Air Force – 78 points
San Diego State – 70 points
Wyoming – 65 points
San Jose State – 58 points
Colorado State – 48 points
Utah State – 48 points
UNLV – 33 points
Nevada – 23 points
New Mexico – 16 points
Hawaii – 15 points
Could a rematch of last year’s title clash, which would be the fifth such game between the Broncos and Bulldogs, be in the works? While those two teams earned all of the first-place votes, it isn’t totally clear-cut among our ranks: Four different teams earned at least one first- or second-place vote.
Among those closer to the top of the projected standings, it also seems clear that tiebreakers could play a major role in how things ultimately shake out, especially since head-to-head results may not always be a factor: Fresno State and Air Force don’t play each other in this regular season, for instance, and neither do Wyoming and San Diego State.
The two squads with the widest degree of disagreement among our writers appear to be the Cowboys and Spartans: The former was voted as high as third and as low as eighth, while the latter appeared as high as fourth and as low as eighth.
At the bottom of the standings, our staff doesn’t appear to have a lot of faith in New Mexico’s off-season overhaul and seems to think the rebuilds at Nevada and Hawaii need another year to truly start paying dividends.
