65 predictions, #28

Well, I finally bought a home today. So let's talk home records.

#28: The Mountain West will have a better non-conference home record than the Big East, despite having a slightly more difficult home schedule. I already ran down the numbers for the Big East in a previous post, so here is the MWC's non-conference home schedule:

31.6% of non-conference home games are against I-AA opponents.
47.4% are against non-BCS teams (56% of these games are rivalry games), 33% of which went to bowl games last season.
3 of their 4 BCS opponents at home have played in at least one BCS game; two of those have played in a BCS National Championship Game.
On another note: only 52.8% of MWC non-conference games are at home, compared to 62.5% for the Big East. May not seem like much, but it works out to about 1 extra home game per team.

I predict the MWC will win between 73-78% of their non-conference home games. The Big East will win somewhere between 71-76%. The worst thing that could happen to the Mountain West this season would be to lose. They made such a fuss about the BCS after having a stellar season as a conference, if they don't keep it up this year they'll get a lot of "we told you so's" from the BCS. Louisville-Utah is the only head-to-head matchup we have this season to compare these two conferences specifically. Go Utes???