An interesting question I've been tossing around with myself... say we have the same injuries. What is our record in the MWC after 7 games? Assume a similar schedule: the three best teams on our schedule, three mediocre teams, and one gimme.

Let's keep Montana State, since BSU would be a conference game and we'd replace them with an FCS team. Keep in mind, these teams are only similar in their relative position in the conference. I'm not saying the Wyoming Cowboys could give the Huskies a game. So the schedule until now, doing my best to make partners out of roughly similar teams: 

Montana State Bobcats
@ TCU Horned Frogs
@ BYU Cougars
Wyoming Cowboys
Boise State Broncos
@ Pittsburgh Panthers
@ Colorado State Rams

My 'predictions' after the jump...

The easy ones are the games we actually played, against the Bobcats, Cougars, and Panthers (we can only beat kitties... look out, Washington State!) The other easy one is the Broncos... we would get our trash handed to us, home or not.

I think TCU is a 50/50 shot at a win, very similar to the USC game (we still had Wynn at that point). We'll count it as a loss, because it's that kind of season. 

I think we could take Wyoming this year, and the Rams as well.... that would put us at 5-2, with SDSU, UNLV, UNM, and Air Force left on the conference slate. I think we would probably wind up at 9-3 or 8-4.

What does this mean? I think it means that we shouldn't panic about making it in this conference. This is not the 2008 or 2004 Utes getting a hard introduction to the big boys. This is an upper-middle of the MWC team turning into a lower end PAC-12 team. This is what we would expect would happen to Air Force or BYU in a big conference. We knew going into it this was going to be a rebuilding year, we just forgot that rebuilding years are a lot more painful when you don't play a half a dozen patsies to close out the season (such as San Jose State, Oregon State, Idaho State, Idaho, and New Mexico State... zoobs).