For the second half of the BCS's existence, no conference put more pressure on the entrenched system of power-conference hegemony than the Mountain West. With teams like Utah, TCU, and Boise State all staking their claim for national recognition, the league forced a new discussion around the place of these mid-major schools in the upper...
San Diego State v. Cincinnati
Aloha Stadium -- Honolulu, HI
December 24, 2015 -- 8:00 pm Eastern (ESPN)
Why You Should Watch
Christmas Eve from Hawaii has been an annual tradition of the postseason calendar of the 21st century, providing the fulcrum between the first week of bowl games and the...
Everything is set, with all 40 bowl matchups now set in stone for the 2015 season. We now know that the American Athletic Conference was the undisputed king of the mid-major conferences, that Conference USA and the MAC overtook the Mountain West in the pecking order, and that the Sun Belt is still the caboose of the FBS leagues.
Let's...
For every contender left in the Access Bowl race in 2015, just one plot point remains for each of them as they all strive to present the strongest possible resume for the College Football Playoff selection committee to parse through. Four of the Group of Five conferences have winnowed down to their final two hopefuls in the race for the...
We are getting to a point in the 2015 season where determining which teams will win their respective Group of Five conferences is oddly becoming more difficult. What we are seeing, however, is a clear hierarchy emerging between the mid-major conferences.
Not all conference championships are created equal. Even as undefeated teams have...
With a couple of upsets and a wild comeback keeping things interesting within the Group of Five over Week 11, there is a lot more clarity in some divisions and a lot more confusion as to what might happen in others. This week we winnow down the rankings by one team to 14, as we focus exclusively on those teams that still have a...
This is coming at you late this week for personal reasons, but while we've already seen some weekday Week 11 games take place there is still no logical answer as to why we should not look back at last week's shakedown of the mid-major standings.
Because, in the end, there was a ton of chaos among the Access Bowl hopefuls. By the time...
In the lead-up to the upcoming college football season, Sports Unbiassed is taking a look at the top 20 teams with a chance to win the Access Bowl bid in 2015. You can find the full list of the Top 20, links to other team previews, and read more about the methodology behind the rankings here.
San Diego State...
Last year provided the first glimpse of what a new future of increased access for mid-major programs might look like. No longer was an undefeated season and praying for a high ranking a prerequisite for selection to a major bowl game for the schools of the Mountain West, AAC, Sun Belt, Conference USA, and MAC.
The hierarchy still...
Navy v. San Diego State
Qualcomm Stadium -- San Diego, CA
December 23, 2014 -- 9:30 pm Eastern (ESPN)
Why You Should Watch
It's the first of San Diego's two bowl games played in Qualcomm Stadium, one of the last extant examples of the multi-purpose stadium craze of the 1960s. This...
