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2019 Mountain West Bowl Projections

The first look bowl projections for the 2019 Mountain West football season

Contact/Follow @JeremyMauss & @MWCwire

Way-too-early look at bowl projections

The 2018 season is barely over and so why not have some fun and look ahead to 2019 and predict where the Mountain West teams could be in the postseason next year.

Our staff already did early preseason projections for 2019 and will base the bowl projections off of those for a pecking order. In those projections, there actually was a tie for first place in total votes but to break the tie we are going with Fresno State as the top choice because the Bulldogs has more first-place votes compared to Boise State which was six to three.

As for the pecking order, there is a slight change for 2019 which has BYU guaranteed to play a Mountain West team in the Hawaii Bowl, if eligible, or it will be an AAC team. Also, it will the Hawaii Warriors from the Mountain West if eligible.

Overall, the league has five guaranteed bowl berths and is a backup for the Cheez-It Bowl if the Pac-12 or Big 12 does not have enough teams eligible. As always, there can be trades for the best matchups.

Also, if the Mountain West is the highest rated team in the College Football Playoff then a New Year’s Six Bowl game is an option at either the Cotton or Orange Bowl.

1. Las Vegas vs. Pac-12

– Famous Idaho Potato Bowl vs. MAC
– Gildan New Mexico Bowl vs. Conference USA
– Hawai’i Bowl vs. BYU or American
– NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl vs. Sun Belt
– Cheez-It Bowl Conditional for MW if bowl can’t fill a spot.

In these first projections, there will not be a Mountain West team in the New Year’s Six game because it is UCF that is getting ranked the highest in the early top 25 rankings from the Group of Five teams.

Because it is super early we are sticking with the five most likely teams to get to a bowl game and placing them in the Mountain West’s bowl lineup. The conference had six bowl-eligible teams last year and multiple times had seven bowl participants, so it is possible the league can get more than five games to the postseason.

The initial five, and in no order: Utah State, San Diego State, Fresno State, Boise State, and Nevada. Those are the top five teams in our extremely early power rankings.

Hawaii, Wyoming, and Air Force have a good shot to get to the required six wins to become bowl eligible.

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