"The Hurdle" then and now

[ragtimejoe1]

Not to keep beating a dead horse, but we continually make projections about where the team will be, what records might be, etc. It seems that the strength of schedule is almost always ignored. So, this thread is about what you predict going forward for the MWC because that most certainly impacts our future records. Getting to 5 or 6 wins with byu, Utah, TCU and a few other solid teams was a different beast. Please, none of the rah rah crap about how we are working together to improve.

For illustration, I summarized Sagarin rankings for opponents in 2008 (peak year for MWC?) compared with last year (2008-2015 and sorted best to worst):
5-27
7-45
32-53
56-55
58-73
73-76
84-100
88-104
94-110
120-123
136-141
150-184

Looking at rankings for just conference opponents last year:
27
45
73
76
100
104
110
123

Thus, 1/2 of our conference schedule was bottom 1/4 of FBS and 75% of our conference schedule was approximately bottom 1/3 of FBS.

Personally, I see last year as the new MWC. Budgets are ever tightening and I just haven't seen anything from most of our teams to suggest that the MWC is taking a big step forward. The 5 win hurdle suggests that we would be ranked somewhere between 75-100. IMO, you can't talk about the improvement of our program without considering our conference.