First-place Wyoming …
Yes, that’s right. The Wyoming Cowboys, who have been hammered in nonleague paycheck road trips to Oregon and Michigan State, are leading the Mountain West’s Mountain Division.
Saturday in Boston, several hours after covering Colorado State’s 24-21 victory over Boston College at Chestnut Hill, I was shocked to hear that Air Force had knocked off Boise State 28-14 at Falcon Stadium.
My first reaction was that CSU suddenly again had a shot to win the Mountain Division. I hadn’t envisioned Boise State losing a Mountain West game. The Broncos were that impressive in manhandling the Rams in Boise on Sept. 6, not just winning the game, but also dominating physically.
Yet now in the division, the Broncos, CSU and Air Force all have one conference defeat, and Utah State hasn’t yet played a conference game.
So Wyoming is alone on top, at 1-0 on the basis of the Cowboys’ victory over the Falcons.
It was additional good news for CSU and coach Jim McElwain.
The Rams are 3-1 for the season and are coming off a heartening road win. Justifiably, much has been made of the likely imminent widening of the gap in resources and talent between “power” leagues and the rest of the FBS, including the Mountain West. Yet CSU has beaten the past three power-league teams it has played — Washington State and Colorado from the Pac-12 and now Boston College from the ACC. The Rams won’t play another one this season, unless it’s in a bowl game.
Seniors Garrett Grayson and Charles Lovett hooked up on the fourth-down, 12-yard touchdown pass with 1:02 left Saturday that brought the Rams from behind.
“Charles and I have been through so much in this program,” Grayson said. “We’ve obviously been through the 3-9 seasons, we’ve been through the rough times and we’ve been through the rebuilding process with Coach Mac. I think that play kind of says it all about what we’ve built here and what Coach Mac is building here.”
The Rams probably will be 4-1 next Saturday unless they get too full of themselves and allow struggling Tulsa to pull off an upset on the orange-hued Ag Day at Hughes Stadium. There’s probably not much chance of that happening, considering McElwain after the BC game already was starting to remind the Rams that they had fallen apart, given up 13 unanswered fourth-quarter points and lost to Tulsa in the second game of last season.
The start isn’t as important as what it portends: The Rams seem to be good enough to make this a season of continued improvement in McElwain’s third year on the job, regardless of whether or not they can pull off winning the division.
Thursday, CSU president Tony Frank will recommend to the CSU system’s board of governors that he spend two months pondering stadium options — whether to remain in Hughes Stadium or find ways to finance and green-light the on-campus stadium project in some form — before delivering a final recommendation in December.
That two additional months of study almost certainly is going to be endorsed by the board, so this season will be continue to be part of the backdrop as the on-campus stadium issue approaches a go or no-go decision.
In his mass e-mail outlining what he would recommend to the board Thursday, and the options he would consider, he closed with a passionate argument that even in the evolving college football landscape, a program at the Mountain West level — the FBS second tier — could be an invaluable asset for the university as a whole and that high athletic ambition was in keeping with prideful campuswide standards.
The 2014 Rams individually can’t write difference-making checks. As a team, though, they could help that case.
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
