The biggest game in Mountain West history is between #3 TCU and #5 Utah, this Saturday. Air Force has played and lost to both of these teams, and knows how good they are. The Falcons were easily beaten when they faced TCU, losing 38-7, with the Utah game being much closer at 28-23.
Again, saying this game is huge would be an understatement. This is the first matchup this season in college football to feature two teams this highly ranked. This is a must see game for any college football fan, and while the game is on CBS College Sports, who is having a free preview this weekend, there is no excuse to not find a way to watch this game.
Currently TCU is favored by 4.5 and that seems a bit ambitious since TCU has never beaten Utah at home, ever. Plus, Utah has won by a nearly similar margin to TCU. The teams are almost a mirror image of each other. Defensively, TCU gives up only 8.7 points per game where Utah allows 14.4, and on offense both are scoring more then 40 points per game, so something will have to give this weekend.
While the winner of this game has at least BCS aspirations and possibly a shot at the BCS title, the loser has much more to lose in this game. The Mountain West bowl situation is just dreadful. The champion, or first choice if not in a BCS game, goes to a pre-Christmas Las Vegas Bowl game against the 4th or 5th Pac-10 team.
Here are the three bowl scenarios that could play out for either team (I assume both teams win out after this game):
- The winner goes to either the BCS title game or a BCS game. The loser probably still a top 10 team goes to the Las Vegas bowl to face a 6-6 Pac-10 team.
- The winner is still behind Boise State in the final BCS rankings and gets passed over for a BCS league team and heads to the Las Vegas Bowl as an undefeated team probably ranked 4th. The loser who is hovering around the 10 spot at 11-1 goes to either the Poinsettia Bowl to face Navy or even worse the Armed Forces bowl to play a middle of the pack C-USA team.
- The third could be that the Pac-10 does not have enough teams and the Las Vegas Bowl can try to broker a deal to bring in a better team to face the loser of Saturday's game.
So to put it bluntly, this is game is huge because there is no chance that both teams can make it to a BCS bowl game. For that to happen everyone would have to start losing a lot of games. Clear your calendar and make sure you tune into this game at 1:30 p.m. mountain time on CBS College Sports.