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.

UAB ELIMINATES FOOTBALL! Idiocy Cited!

As elucidated here in Sports Illustrated, the University of Alabama board of trustees has voted to eliminate football at the UA-Birmingham campus - like, basically right now, following their impending bowl game now that first year head coach Bill Clark and long time AD Brian Mackin have brought the program back up to respectability at 6-6.

Let me repeat that.

The UAB Blazers, having spent years trying to build this football program, having hired a tremendous young and up-n-coming coach who's done great things with a young team this year, just had the rug pulled out from under them. 

As Thayer Evans points out, there were warning signs that fueled the rumors all season...why won't they extend Clark's contract?...why hasn't Mackin put any more non-conference games on the schedule beyond next season? 

But the nastier rumors swirl beneath the surface, and they're worse than the pay-the-players scandals and the sinecure-jobs-for-athletes tales we fear: the University of Alabama trustees were afraid of any competition for the affections of the state with the Crimson Tide of Tuscaloosa. Gene Bartow's role is discussed in Evans' article, but there's a down-South, good-ol'-boy network at play that's downright frightening. As if the University of Auburn isn't competition enough, we don't want no young whippersnappers pulling the carpetbaggers out from under us. This seems to have been brewing for a while - those non-conference games should have been scheduled three years ago. (Most teams have at least some games scheduled into the 2020's.)

Look out, South Alabama and Troy. You're next. Ain't NO one gonna stand in the path of Lord Saban and the Tide...

Week 9 - the Basement Tiers (P through U, not that "P-U" is implied...)

Here are the lowest six tiers for Week 9, our "bottom 37", if you will...

Tier P: Colorado (2-7), Indiana (3-5), Ohio (4-5), Purdue (3-6), South Florida (3-6), and Alabama-Birmingham (5-4).

Tier Q: Buffalo (3-5), Florida International (3-6), Iowa St (2-6), South Alabama (5-3), Vanderbilt (3-6), and Wake Forest (2-6).

Tier R: Four-win Akron, three-win Appalachian St, Ball St, and Southern Miss, and two-win Army and Kansas.

Tier S is the other grouping with seven teams this week, including the following two and three win teams from the Group of Five conferences: Hawaii, New Mexico, Old Dominion, Tulane, UNLV, UTSA, and Western Kentucky.

The "Bottom Twelve" begins with Tier T, which features the following familiar names: Eastern Michigan (2-7), Miami of Ohio (2-8), North Texas (2-6), Tulsa (1-7), U Conn (2-6), and U Mass (2-7).

And finally, the "Bottom Six" (aka Tier U), the same six as last week: Georgia St (1-8), Idaho (1-7), Kent St (1-7), New Mexico St (2-7, but wins against other Bottom Six teams), Troy (1-8), and the only winless team in the Football Bowl Subdivision, SMU (0-7).

And let's not forget the Bottom Eight!

The Bottom Eight is represented by SMU of Conference USA, who at 0-5 seems without hope of a win this year; three teams from the MAC: Miami of Ohio (1-5), UMass (1-5), and the current loser du jour, Kent St (0-6, 40-17 victims of Massachusetts). The master of the Bottom Eight, however, is the Sun Belt conference, whose mediocrity is so profound that we have to expand to 8 1/2 for the week to accommodate it! Definitely in are winless Idaho (0-6, who managed to fail against the wide spread they faced this week) and newbie Appalachian St (1-5, who managed to lose to FCS Liberty). The other two spots are shared by three other SBC schools: New Mexico St (2-5), Troy (1-5), and Georgia St (1-5), who are beating each other up for those coveted final Bottom Eight spots!

Also waiting for a table... Ball St (1-5), UConn (1-5), and the Pointer Sisters of the Poor: Southern Miss, North Texas, and Eastern Michigan (all 2-4, by sheer will power and patsy FCS scheduling).