College Football Previews 2025: Mountain West

Split Zone Duo: College Football Podcast

Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner

News, Sports, Sports News, Football

4.9 • 916 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Richard and Alex preview the Mountain West in 2025, starting with the same team that’s favored every year and then going in no particular order:

* Boise State still looks like the class of the league

* San Jose State has leveled up, but now Ken Niumatalolo confronts life without an All-American receiver

* UNLV is the apple of Richard’s eye with Dan Mullen in charge

* Colorado State made strides last year, but were they real, or were they just the result of a lousy schedule? Does it matter?

* Fresno State wipes the slate clean, but we’re optimistic

* Hawaii looks a lot better than we both thought they would

* Air Force should get back to business the way it used to be done

* San Diego State was shockingly bad on offense in Sean Lewis’ first year. How much does that change our feeling on them?

* Utah State made a great hire, but it’ll take some time

* Wyoming is still searching for an identity

* New Mexico is a blank canvas, and a new coach from FCS is trying something different

* Nevada is a hard job that continues to be hard

The episode wraps with preseason award nominees from the hosts for the SZD Dude of the Year, the Low-Key Cool Game of the Year, the Minority Coach of the Week In an Interesting Schematic Spot (of the Year), and the Coach Who’s Not Gonna Be Here Next Year. Producer: Anthony Vito.

Catch up on all of our 2025 previews

In reverse chronological order:

* ACC

* Conference USA

* Big 12

* MAC

* Pac-12 and FBS independents

* Sun Belt

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We're coming, and we ain't backing down.
0:01.9	We don't need a bunch of cats in here. Looking in the mirror. Everybody just do your job. You understand that? Hey, will you shut up? I'm bitterly disappointed with the officiating today. Guys being dudes. And they run through our like a shit through a ten horn, man. Ah, fuck it. Thank you, Lee. Conference preview season continues here at Split Zone Duo headquarters with the Mountain West.
0:23.2	A reminder, a thing that we talk about at the beginning of these previews.
0:27.8	Previews are for ball talking.
0:29.4	The Mountain West is in realignment flux right now.
0:32.7	Who's going to be in this league in 2026 and beyond?
0:36.0	Other than Northern Illinois and the teams that are
0:38.6	currently in there now, but even the teams that are currently in there now, I don't really know.
0:42.0	Lots of been going on with this league.
0:43.3	It's fight with the Pact 12.
0:45.3	It's why it is so refreshing to get to do a podcast where we just talk about football that will
0:50.7	be played in the Mountain West Conference as currently constituted in 2025. I'm Alex Kirshner, joined yet again by my co-host, Richard Johnson. Richard, how are you? Like we never left, baby. Like we never left. Quick note off the top, we really want to see you on August 23rd at the Sports Podcast Festival in Raleigh, North Carolina. It's week zero Saturday.
1:12.1	You're there. I'm there. Our co-host, Emeritus, and co-founder, Stephen Godfrey is going to be there with us, as well as a couple of other outstanding podcasts. We want to see you in person, want to meet you, want to talk football with you, both in the podcast sense and in the actual having a conversation afterwards. So it would be lovely to have you there. Go to splitzoneduo live.com for tickets.
1:11.1	Use the code SZD. having a conversation afterwards. So it would be lovely to have you there. Go to SplitZonduilive.com for tickets.
1:30.3	Use the code SZD for 25% off your ticket price when you do that.
1:36.1	We'd love to see you.
1:37.0	In Raleigh, North Carolina, at the Rialto, a tremendous venue on August 23rd.
1:42.3	We look forward to it.
1:43.4	All right, Richard.
1:44.0	We're going to go loosely
1:45.3	in preseason poll order as we preview the Mountain West, but we deviate a bit as we split up
1:51.8	the book reports that we do on these teams. So it's going to be mostly in the order of the
	...

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