WAC in bowl games

[PonyPride]

From the Western Athletic Conference office:

DENVER – The Western Athletic Conference placed second in ESPN’s “Bowl Challenge Cup” for conferences with the best bowl winning percentage that played a minimum of three bowl games. The WAC won two of its three bowl games for a winning percentage of .667. The complete ESPN Bowl Challenge Cup standings are included below.

“The Western Athletic Conference once again showed that WAC football is some of the most exciting, entertaining football in the nation,” said WAC Commissioner Karl Benson. “The 2002 bowl season further exemplified that football programs in the WAC are among the nation’s best and most successful.”

Hawai‘i played in the inaugural ConAgra Foods Hawai‘i Bowl on Christmas Day and was defeated by Tulane, 36-28. The Warriors played most of the game without starting quarterback Timmy Chang, who was among the nation’s leaders in passing yards. Hawai‘i finished the season with a record of 10-4, its first 10-win season since the 1992 team finished the year with an 11-2 mark.

WAC champion Boise State beat Iowa State, 34-16, in the Crucial.com Humanitarian Bowl on December 31. Boise State completed a season in which it finished with a 12-1 overall record and an 8-0 WAC mark. The Broncos finished the season ranked 12th in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll and 15th in the AP Poll, the highest final ranking for a WAC team since 1998. Boise State laid claim to the most dominant team in WAC history, as it won its WAC games by an average of 37.3 points, the highest margin in league history.

Fresno State, which played in the Silicon Valley Football Classic in San Jose, defeated Georgia Tech, 30-21, on December 31. The Bulldogs finished the season with a 9-5 record and overcame a myriad of injuries to play in their fourth-consecutive bowl game. The bowl victory was Fresno State’s first since a 24-7 victory over USC in the 1992 Freedom Bowl. With the win over Georgia Tech, Fresno State has now defeated four different BCS opponents in the past two seasons, more than any other non-BCS team.

ESPN Bowl Challenge Cup Standings
Conference W-L Pct.
Big 10 5-2 .714
WAC 2-1 .667
Big 12 5-3 .625
Big East 3-2 .600
ACC 4-3 .571
SEC 3-4 .429
CUSA 2-3 .400
Pac-10 2-5 .286
MWC 0-3 .000

[EastStang]

Mountain West can anyone say Losers? CUSA looked pretty puny, too. Luckily for them they faced Hawaii without Chang and the Mountain West champs. Kudos to FSU and BSU against some decent competition.

[HorsePower]

Ha - those powerhouses who make up the Mountain Less Conference sure knew what they were doing when they broke ranks, huh?

[PerunaPunch]

Humph,

Just goes to show that you can cook the statistics to prove whateverthehell you want.

Still amusing, but hardly meaningful to compare victories in the Q-tipEarWaxRemoval.com bowl to the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Cotton.

[EastStang]

I didn't see any Mountain Worst or CUSA teams in any of those bowls either. In fact, CUSA had the ignomy of losing to SBC and MAC teams. MWC and CUSA lost in those "thisendup.com" bowls. I agree that comparing BCS games with those no name bowls is like comparing apples and oranges. I might add that teams that SMU played this year were 4-1 in bowls.

[No Cal Pony]

Comparing bowls may not be any option, but it is the competition and teams. iowa st. is a big xii, right? georgia tech is acc, right? No matter that WAC teams faced off against these progams in the small bowls, you cannot argue their conference affiliations. Those were big wins for WAC schools no matter how you slice it. I got into it with a LA Times reporter years back before tcu beat usc in a smaller bowl game. Everyone out in CA expected usc to cruise to a win, and I argued otherwise. Result, tcu embarassed the trojans, even the LA Times writer had to eat crow.

WAC schools get overlooked, but now maybe folks will take a little more notice. Also, fresno st. will take on anybody, and is facing some "big" programs in the next few years. I only say if they can do it, why can't we??

Go Ponies!

[Charleston Pony]

the only way the WAC or any other mid-major conference is ever going to earn a measure of respect is by "busting" the barrier the BCS has created for mid-majors. That means someone is going to have to go undefeated and that team will have had to have beaten some BCS conference foes in their non-conference slate (most likely on the road). Boise St was clearly the class of the WAC this year, but they got whipped early in the season AT Arkansas. Had they been able to play the Hogs in Boise, who knows? But, the system is set up to make it very, very difficult for an mid-major to crash the BCS party. How tough is it to win on the road in college football? Ask Ohio State, who barely survived a visit to Cincinnati earlier this year. Scheduling that game could have kept them out of the National Championship game.

[PerunaPunch]

Good point No Cal Pony.

I guess if this proves anything, it proves that at least our top WAC teams are competitive with all but the most elite football programs.