Here's our predictions for the rest of the FBS conferences!

Having just posted our predictions for the Power Five conferences (the ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, Pac-12, and SEC), it's time to take a look at the other five conferences in the Bowl Subdivision - the American, Conference USA, the MAC, the Mountain West, and the Sun Belt Conference. Here we go!

The American Athletic Conference (formerly the Big East):
*Six teams will vie for the title, so the champ may have two or even three conf losses!
*In the West, Memphis looks the class, although Houston will host them on Nov 14 and could steal the division with a win there.
*Navy's joined a conference for the first time in their 135 years of football! Looking at 3rd...
*Tulane should beat Tulsa at home and lock up 4th, while SMU will be better than last year, even if it doesn't get them out of the basement.
*In the East, it's easier to start at the bottom: UConn 6th, and South Florida 5th.
*All four of the others should thrash each other into a 5-3 logjam! We'll wager on East Carolina 1st, Central Florida 2nd, and Cincinnati 3rd with Temple in 4th. But who knows?
*Given that, we'll take Memphis to win the title game.

Conference USA:
*The winner of the Marshall at Western Kentucky game wins the division and the title.
*As of this moment? We'll lean on the revenge factor and pick the Thundering Herd.
*Middle Tennessee heads a distant pack behind them in the East.
*Pencil in Old Dominion, FIU, FAU, and newcomer UNC-Charlotte in the 4/5/6/7 spots.
*Nobody in the West can punch with WKU or Marshall, but Louisiana Tech should get the chance.
*If not, it'll be Rice - they've developed a good system there.
*UTEP should be able to rise to third, and then it depends on some ball bounces: 
*We're thinking Southern Miss rises to 4th, North Texas 5th, and UTSA falls back to sixth.

Mid-American Conference (the MAC):
*They've marketed a marginal conference well - the Tuesday and Wednesday night games on ESPN, the "#MACtion" tweets, and all the exciting play from clever coaches. 
*The power division here is the West, where by throwing their names in a hat I came up with:
*Northern Illinois winning the division (most experience winning).
*Toledo 2nd, Western Michigan fighting a tough schedule for third, and Ball St in 4th.
*Central Michigan is an easy 5th place pick, because the top 4 are significantly better, and...
*Eastern Michigan is conceivably the worst team in football, at least this year in the FBS.
*In the East, Bowling Green is the class of the division (though they'll lose the title game).
*Only Terry Bowden's Akron has a shot to dethrone them, with Frank Solich's Ohio team in third. 
*Four bad teams round out the MAC-East: U-Mass (bad), Buffalo (bad), Kent St (really bad), and Miami of Ohio (so bad Miami-FL makes them distinguish that they are not the same school). 

Mountain West conference:
* This year, it should be Boise State and the eleven dwarves, but that remains to be proven. 
*Boise's rating numbers are so far above everyone else's that they should be 8-0 in conference, with only a tough out-of-conf schedule to manage. If they goes 3-1 there, they should be playing in a major bowl again. 
*Utah St figures to give them the best battle, although they've hit some rocky stretches here.
*CSU, Air Force, Wyoming, and New Mexico round out the Mountain division, in that order.
*In the West, six mediocre teams fight for the division title, with San Diego St looking like the best candidate for the job,
*Nevada's coming up on the rail for 2nd, and Fresno St's struggling this off-season. 
*San Jose may still be 4th, but not for lack of trying. Meanwhile, Hawaii will put some wins on the home field, and UNLV won't.

Sun Belt Conference:
*I know - this should've been in yellow...but Appalachian St and Georgia Southern are the 1-2 teams here...Only the two of them, plus maybe 3rd place Arkansas St and maybe 4th place Louisiana Lafayette would have a chance to win even one game in any other conference. Even the MAC or Conf-USA!
*Texas State is the best of the rest, and should be able to pull off a .500 or better record in league.
*After that, it's turtles all the way down. 
*Depending on how South Alabama takes to its 10-15 new players who were with UAB last year before their one year hiatus, they could be as high as sixth (maybe fifth?). Or UL-Monroe will slide from 7th up to 6th...
*Below that are four of the five Bottom Five teams to start the season (most likely): Troy in 8th; New Mexica St (9th), Idaho (10th), and Georgia State (11th).

So, to recap - the Bottom Five would be Troy,  NMSU, the Vandals, Georgia State, and Eastern Michigan, along with their intern, newbie Charlotte from the C-USA. (If we're counting Army as a non-Power conference team, then the Cadets from West Point will be in that Bottom mix as well.) Boise State should repeat as the Power of Five rep in the New Year's Six bowl games, and the conference champs will include Appalachian State, Northern Illinois, Marshall, and Memphis.

Some great mid-major (and above) thoughts from "Fan-Sided"

Here are a couple of posts from the college football section of SI's FanSided, including one listing five schools who are not only ready to move up but additionally NEED to move up to a Power Five conference ASAP...a short clip about the contract extension for Boise State's head coach, but the real news is that little ol' Boise is giving its DC and OC three-year, million dollar contracts, something unheard of just a few years ago...and an interesting analysis of five schools who turn the two and three star recruits into five star players because of their coaching, style, consistency, and methods.

All 38 bowl games in one place!

(Sorta...)

Here's Graham Watson's obligatory piece rating the lo-oo-ong list of bowls from most to least interesting to watch. (This one's from Dr. Saturday on Yahoo...I'm sure ESPN and SI.com will have theirs up any moment now.) 

On our list, we particularly like the Arkansas/Texas matchup of the old SouthWest Conference rivals in the "Texas Bowl", as well as the Utah/Colorado St matchup in Vegas. Both games have teams right next to each other in our rankings, and are regional rivalries with a great deal of interest. West Virginia/Texas A&M in Memphis' "Liberty Bowl" should be a blast as well. Finally, as a Group of Five proponent, we are partial to the meeting of the C-USA and MAC champions, Marshall/Northern Illinois, in Boca Raton, Florida - two very good teams, no matter what level they're on. (We'll have much more on the bowl games down the road, including our projections for all of them.)

Week 12 tiers and rankings, part 2...

TIER G: 41. Utah St (9-3). 42. Washington (7-5), and Chris Petersen is not far from where his previous team resides! 43. Cincinnati (7-3). 44. East Carolina (7-3). 45. Iowa (7-4). And yes, there are only five in this tier - we're dividing where the natural breaks are!

TIER H. 46. Memphis (8-3). 47. Tennessee (5-6). 48. Boston College (6-5), after a great game at FSU. 49. North Carolina (6-5). 50. Penn St (6-5), and promise for the future. 51. Kentucky (5-6), and what happened to a promising season.... 52. Oklahoma St (5-6), and we could say the same for the Cowboys!

TIER I: 53. BYU (7-4), after beating down a winless FCS team. 54. Air Force (8-3). 55. California (5-6). 56. North Carolina St (6-5). 57. Central Florida (7-3).

TIER J: 58. Northern Illinois (9-2), but not like they were! 59. Pitt (5-6), with a win they HAD to have. 60. Rutgers (6-5). 61. Oregon St (5-6). 62. Navy (5-5).

TIER K: 63. Virginia Tech (5-6), after a terrible loss against Wake in 2OT. 64. Western Michigan (8-3). 65. Michigan (5-6), in Hoke's last season. 66. Nevada (6-5). 67. Louisiana Tech (7-4). And so ends the mid-level teams...and so begin the mediocre ones,,,

TIER L: 68. Bowling Green (8-3). 69. Georgia Southern (8-3). 70. Northwestern (5-6). 71. Virginia (4-7). 72. UL-Lafayette (7-4). 73. Houston (6-4).

TIER M: 74. Rice (7-4). 75. San Diego St (6-5). 76. Illinois (5-6). 77. Texas Tech (4-7). 79. Fresno St (5-6). 80. Temple (5-5).

TIER N: 81. Arkansas St (6-5). 82. Central Michigan (7-5). 83. Washington St (3-8). 84. Western Kentucky (6-5) and still climbing! 85. UTEP (6-5). 

Reviewing our Week 10 predictions!

Well, if you've been with us this week, you know we've been firing on all cylinders in Week 10! Here's our results...

Successes: Bowling Green over Akron...NIU over Ball St...Temple closer than a TD to Memphis...Baylor destroying Oklahoma...Duke big over Syracuse...Army over UConn...TCU over Kansas St...LSU took Alabama to overtime....Toronto over Ottawa late...Hamilton wins against Montreal (half-credit)..,Cardinals big over the Rams. We'd like to be able to claim Minnesota's win over Iowa, but we didn't, so we can't.

Missteps: We said UL-Monroe would win against Appalachian St; the Warhawks gave up a late FG to lose 31-29...We were surprised Old Dominion beat FIU 38-35, but they had to score ten points in the last 65 seconds to do it...Ohio St beat Michigan St, on the road...Arizona St sure impressed us, handling Notre Dame...Didn't think Saskatchewan still had it in them to beat Edmonton...and the half-credit Hamilton was because we did NOT think the Tiger-Cats would win by enough to win the division (8). They won by fifteen. (Yes, that's more than eight.)

(And there's still the chance that Chicago could stay close to the Packers tonight.) So, right now, we are 10.5 - 5.5, so we will take that!

Looking at the early games this week...

It's already Week 10, and with our usual November "MAC-tion" upon us during the week, we need to touch on the weeknight games now!

Tuesday: Starting this very moment are two Mid-American games, Bowling Green at Akron (unlike Vegas, we like the Falcons!) and Toledo at Kent St (hard to imagine Kent St winning tonight).

Wednesday: Two more MAC games, this time Buffalo at Ohio (the Bobcats get the three point home field advantage, which we think is about right) and Northern Illinois traveling to Ball St (the Huskies really should be favored by ten or more, not three. Take NIU).

Thursday: Two major games - one in the ACC, Clemson at Wake Forest (favored by 23, and we agree), and one on the NFL Network, with the Cleveland Browns visiting the Cincinnati Bengals (despite the balance in the division, we think Cincy's TD favorite's spread is at least right).

Friday: Four games to consider - two below the 49th parallel (Memphis at Temple, favored by a TD, and Utah St at Wyoming, also favored by a TD), and two above (Ottawa at Toronto, which should be a great fight for the REDBLACKS but a hard fought win by Toronto; and Calgary at BC, which will depend entirely on who the Stampeders choose to rest).