Week 2 Mountain West Football Power Rankings
One team is hoarding the first-place votes
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After No. 1 things get crazy.
The first week of Mountain West had a lot going on. Ranging from the multiple come from behind wins against Power 5 teams to struggles against FCS foe’s, looking at you San Diego State.
With a week’s worth of games in the books, the voting can look a little off to some. The criteria we give to the votes is no direction. Some voters may give a clean slate and rank the teams based off of Week 1 results, some use their preseason prediction as a guide and shuffle as they see fit, and others do a mix with some games being vs. FCS or Power 5 teams.
Putting strict criteria defeats the point of a power poll and after three or four weeks the poll will solidify in tiers going forward, barring some odd results.
Basically, the writers here on the site vote who they feel are the best teams in the conference. Some use to weight the preseason poll as to not overreact and others wipe the slate clean during the first week of the season (which is how I vote).
We also are posting a google doc for readers of the website to chime in and we will compare how the results compare.
Basically, the first few weeks of power ranking polls will look a bit wonky on a ballot by ballot basis. Here are a few of our writers who made their poll public.
Previous: Week 1
The voting for this poll was extremely close as Nevada, Wyoming and Hawaii were all withing seven points of each other for the second through fourth spots. Fresno State is in striking distance of all of those teams but after the Bulldogs there is a decent size drop off.
STAFF POLL
| Rank | Team | Division |
| 1. | Boise State (14 first-place votes, Prev: 1) | Mountain |
| 2. | Nevada (Prev: 7) | West |
| 3. | Wyoming (Prev: 8) | Mountain |
| 4. | Hawaii (Prev: 4) | West |
| 5. | Utah State (Prev: 3) | Mountain |
| 6. | Fresno State (Prev: 2) | West |
| 7. | Air Force (Prev: 6) | Mountain |
| 8. | San Diego State (Prev: 5) | West |
| 9. | UNLV (Prev: 10) | West |
| 10. | New Mexico (Prev: 12) | Mountain |
| 11. | San Jose State (Prev: 11) | West |
| 12. | Colorado State (Prev: 12) | Mountain |
READER POLL
There are seven teams that earned a first-place vote but it was Boise State who was at the top and it was not even close with 66 of the 84 first-place votes.
| Rank | Team | Division |
| 1. | Boise State (66 first-place votes) | Mountain |
| 2. | Wyoming (7 first-place votes) | Mountain |
| 3. | Nevada (5 first-place votes) | West |
| 4. | Utah State (3 first-place votes) | Mountain |
| 5. | Hawaii (1 first-place vote) | West |
| 6. | Fresno State (1 first-place vote) | West |
| 7. | Air Force (1 first-place vote) | Mountain |
| 8. | San Diego State | West |
| 9. | UNLV | West |
| 10. | Colorado State | Mountain |
| 11. | New Mexico | Mountain |
| 12. | San Jose State | West |
