There's a lot of new in the Mountain West this year. Six of the conference's 12 teams have new head coaches, and eight will have new starting quarterbacks, some more promising than others. There are two new pseudo-members, too: Though Oregon State and Washington State have not joined the MWC (and are therefore not in this preview), they have entered into a scheduling arrangement with the MWC, and everyone will get familiar with each other.
As we delve further into this new era of college football -- with particularly destructive conference realignment moves, NIL money, heavier transfer volume and a newly expanded College Football Playoff -- it feels like the MWC is trying to find its place.