As you may have heard, there will be a little shakeup within the Mountain West this season.
Yes, that’s right. Oregon State and Washington State are part of the league’s new scheduling arrangement with the “Pac-2.” These won’t be considered conference games, but Oregon State will play seven MW opponents and WSU will play eight. This will be a good gauge for both of these programs and for the conference, as well.
Outside of the common opponents for the league’s members, there are plenty of other things that stand out about the 2024 schedule:
Week 0
There are four Week 0 games in the FBS this season. Three of them consist of a MW squad.
SMU visits Nevada to open the season while Montana State visits New Mexico, and Hawaii hosts Delaware State. The fourth game that weekend will be Florida State vs. Georgia Tech.
Early Power Five (Four?) Action
The MW will face off against 17 Power Four programs in the first three weeks of the season. Most notable is Fresno State visiting reigning national champ Michigan. Six MW programs will face two such schools in this span. Utah State may have gotten the short end of the stick here by visiting USC in Week 3 before hosting Utah in Week 4.
Colorado State pulled Texas in Week 1 and Colorado in Week 3 while New Mexico faces Arizona in Week 1 and Auburn in Week 3.
There’s a big contrast between P4 and out-of-conference G5 schools. There are only six matchups against non-conference G5 schools — two of them against Georgia Southern.
FCS Opponents
While there are plenty of big-time programs slated on the MW schedule, there’s also a fair share of FCS matchups – 13 to be exact.
This includes five Big Sky schools and two games featuring Sacramento State, who will visit San Jose State in Week 1 and Fresno State in Week 2.
Unfortunate San Jose State
While the Spartans have a very light non-conference schedule, the final six weeks of the season will be a battle. SJSU visits Fresno State in Week 8 before visiting Oregon State in Week 10. They then play Boise State, UNLV, and Stanford in the Bill Walsh Legacy game to close the season. It is the first time since 2013 that the Spartans and the Cardinal will meet.
Fortunate for the Spartans here, though, is that these final three games are at home. And, yes, I know Stanford has won a combined nine games in the past three seasons.
The Spartans are also only one of two teams in the conference that have to play both OSU and WSU. San Diego State also plays both but gets both of those games at home. The Spartans have to go on the road for both.
Stadium Crickets
There are seven teams that will go a stretch of three weeks without playing a game at home — Air Force, Boise, Fresno, SDSU, SJSU, Utah State, and Wyoming. Boise and USU will encounter this twice.
Now, these aren’t three consecutive road games but feature two road games and a bye week. Still, players and coaches will get antsy not playing in front of their home crowd for long stretches. And don’t forget about how antsy the fans get.
Rivalry Week?
There are a few notable rivalries in the Mountain West. Those are the Border War between Wyoming and CSU, and the Battle for Nevada between UNLV and UNR. Other than those two, there really aren’t any premier rivalries in the league.
SDSU/SJSU isn’t much of a rivalry, and Air Force and Hawaii doesn’t seem like much of a rivalry either, even though they do play for a trophy. Boise and Fresno feels more like a rivalry than those two — especially on a competitive level — and the schools play for the Milk Can. But this game, too, should have more excitement surrounding it from a rivalry standpoint.
Regardless, there’s only one of these matchups on rivalry week in the 2024 campaign with UNLV hosting UNR. I think it could do the conference good to try to squeeze in more of these matchups on rivalry week.
