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nightmare scenario....

OrediggerPoke said:
They are 5-3 in the 2nd best conference in the country with all their losses being close games.

If Wyoming fell that hard, I wouldn’t be complaining. Instead, we are in perhaps the worst FBS conference in the country.
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They are .500 in all games with a losing conference record in the last 15 years. They used to be one of the absolute premier football schools in the nation and history of college football. That has to be hard to swallow for their fans

Edit: .428 conference record over last 15 years! And if you cherry pick only the last 14 years it’s.398! They legit suck (yes we do too, but that wasn’t my point)
 
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Bear Claw said:
I was thinking modern era. Forgot about Vic. Touché
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Probably because I'm OAF, I use Bowden Wyatt as the start of the modern era of UW football. It's when we started treating the game like a major inter-collegiate activity.

Sawvel could bring himself up to the post-Wyatt average 42%-ish rate by finishing strong this season and doing the same next season. Yes, this MWC is diminished, it's more like the 70s/80s WAC.

cfbtrack.com

Wyoming Cowboys Football Coaches & Records

See Wyoming Cowboys football coaches by season, record, win percentage, SRS, ranked finishes, and linked CFBTrack coach profiles.
cfbtrack.com cfbtrack.com
 
OrediggerPoke said:
In fairness, if Vic played this schedule, we might have been a bowl team.

Two darkest times of Wyoming football during my lifetime:
1) Koenning years
2) Sawvel first 2 years
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No way! Vic's teams were so much worse. We were in a very tough MWC, but we also lost to the worst teams we played, it wasn't even close a lot of the time.
 
Lost Poke said:
No way! Vic's teams were so much worse. We were in a very tough MWC, but we also lost to the worst teams we played, it wasn't even close a lot of the time.
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Disagree.

The worst teams Koenning coached against:

2000 - Central Michigan - Win 31-10 (CMU finished 2-9)
2000- Nevada - Loss 28-35 (Nevada finished 2-10)

2001 - Furman - Win 20-14 - (Furman finished 12-3 and lost in the FCS championship game)
2001 - Utah State - Win 43-42 (USU finished 4-7)
2001 - Kansas - Loss 14-27 (Kansas finished 3-8)

2002 - Citadel - Win 34-30 (Citedal finished 3-9)
2002 - Central Michigan - Loss 20-32 (CMU finished 4-8)

In addition to the tough MWC schedule at the time, Wyoming also played Auburn, Texas A&M (twice), Tennessee, Boise State and Washington.

Koenning generally beat or was competitive with the bad teams. But his schedule was many factors more difficult than the cupcakes Sawvel has faced.

Those 2000-2002 Koenning teams were better than the 2024-2025 Wyoming teams. I watched both in person nearly every home game. Both were bad. I’d choose the Koenning teams over what we saw in 2024-2025.
 
doreno5 said:
Sawvel like Koenning was a defensive coordinator for the coach before him. Both simply are not good head coaches.
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This is the most accurate thing you can say about these guys...they are seperated over 20 years so it is legitimately different eras.

Comparing accross eras is really tough. I tend to shy away from giving credit for losing against tougher schedules or downgrading coaches who have "cupcake" conferences....those are things completely outside of a coaches control.

People downgraded BSU for years because they generally dominated a "lessor" slate of of opponents but that laid the foundation for what they became. In the same vein, if Wyoming goes on a 8-10 year run of dominance in this terrible conference, It will be primarily because they have good coaches and administration....you don't just fall backwards into college football wins...even at the non-powerhouse levels.
 
307bball said:
Comparing accross eras is really tough. I tend to shy away from giving credit for losing against tougher schedules or downgrading coaches who have "cupcake" conferences....those are things completely outside of a coaches control.
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It’s actually not that hard IMO. There is very objective criteria to look at. The computers generally ranked the average MWC team between 65-68 in the country during the Koenning years and between 87-91 during the Sawvel years. The MWC has objectively been much worse comparing timeframes.

If we were to add in the strength of OOC schedules between the two eras, I bet the gap would be even bigger!! With Koenning probably playing a team of an average of about 50-60th best in the country and Sawvel playing a team of an average of probably about 90-100th best in the country. That’s a massive gap!!

Sawvel has largely played crap teams. Koenning played much better teams. That’s an objective fact.

Why our schedules suck now is for lots of reasons that we have discussed on here over the years (ie changes in college football, Wyoming poor performance/struggles on the field, NIL, lack of funding, etc…).
 
OrediggerPoke said:
It’s actually not that hard IMO. There is very objective criteria to look at. The computers generally ranked the average MWC team between 65-68 in the country during the Koenning years and between 87-91 during the Sawvel years. The MWC has objectively been much worse comparing timeframes.

If we were to add in the strength of OOC schedules between the two eras, I bet the gap would be even bigger!! With Koenning probably playing a team of an average of about 50-60th best in the country and Sawvel playing a team of an average of probably about 90-100th best in the country. That’s a massive gap!!

Sawvel has largely played crap teams. Koenning played much better teams. That’s an objective fact.

Why our schedules suck now is for lots of reasons that we have discussed on here over the years (ie changes in college football, Wyoming poor performance/struggles on the field, NIL, lack of funding, etc…).
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I get it..i've got the argument scars with others over this topic. Quality of opponnent is not something I judge a coaches ablity on. If you do..go sick.

Football coaching ability is independant of whatever conference you happen to coach in as far as I'm concerned. Adding in factors that weigh SOS and computer power rankings says more about a coaches career choices than player evaluation/training, leadership, and x's & o's ability.

Now...great coaches tend to end up at better and better schools so there is a healthy correlation...but the mere fact that a coach faced better or worse teams does very little for me when comparing coaching ability.

My guess is we are talking two different things....i'm talking strictly about coaching ability. I think a lot of people confuse power rankings with coaching ability. Yes..I know there would be a correlation. BUT that is just a correlation. Look at JA17 as an example of this. The general public were mightily confused by how highly people ranked him. If you change nothing about what he did and just plop him in the B10 those same people would be falling all over themselves to say how great of a prospect he was...does anything change for how good of a QB he is in either of those two scenarios? Not for JA...but the perspectives of people are very susceptible to the low resolution "power conference QB=Good, G5 conference QB=Bad" type of thought. It's the same for coaches...I think it's a mistake to put any wieght on Koenning's SOS and use it as a defense of his coaching ability. Were his teams better? I guess you have to go and do what you are doing and look into SOS and power rankings. Both are underperforming expectations in pretty spectacular fashion.
 
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307bball said:
I get it..i've got the argument scars with others over this topic. Quality of opponnent is not something I judge a coaches ablity on. If you do..go sick.

Football coaching ability is independant of whatever conference you happen to coach in as far as I'm concerned. Adding in factors that weigh SOS and computer power rankings says more about a coaches career choices than player evaluation/training, leadership, and x's & o's ability.

Now...great coaches tend to end up at better and better schools so there is a healthy correlation...but the mere fact that a coach faced better or worse teams does very little for me when comparing coaching ability.

My guess is we are talking two different things....i'm talking strictly about coaching ability. I think a lot of people confuse power rankings with coaching ability. Yes..I know there would be a correlation. BUT that is just a correlation. Look at JA17 as an example of this. The general public were mightily confused by how highly people ranked him. If you change nothing about what he did and just plop him in the B10 those same people would be falling all over themselves to say how great of a prospect he was...does anything change for how good of a QB he is in either of those two scenarios? Not for JA...but the perspectives of people are very susceptible to the low resolution "power conference QB=Good, G5 conference QB=Bad" type of though. It's the same for coaches...I think it's a mistake to put any wieght on Koenning's SOS and use it as a defense of his coaching ability. Were his teams better? I guess you have to go and do what you are doing and look into SOS and power rankings. Both are underperforming expectations in pretty spectacular fashion.
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I am not following the logic.

Jay Sawvel and Vic Koenning both coached at Wyoming with largely the same hurdles. Both coaches performed extremely poorly and with terrible records (Koenning’s W/L record being worse). All of this is apples to apples.

Another poster stated that the Vic Koenning’s teams were ‘much worse.’ I disagreed with that statement and generally believe that if you took Vic Koenning’s teams and they played the weak schedules that Sawvel’s teams played, that Koenning would likely have performed better with more wins. This is not a difficult leap in logic in my opinion. There is very clear objective data to support that Sawvel has had easy schedules and Koenning did not.
 
OrediggerPoke said:
I am not following the logic.

Jay Sawvel and Vic Koenning both coached at Wyoming with largely the same hurdles. Both coaches performed extremely poorly and with terrible records (Koenning’s W/L record being worse). All of this is apples to apples.

Another poster stated that the Vic Koenning’s teams were ‘much worse.’ I disagreed with that statement and generally believe that if you took Vic Koenning’s teams and they played the weak schedules that Sawvel’s teams played, that Koenning would likely have performed better with more wins. This is not a difficult leap in logic in my opinion. There is very clear objective data to support that Sawvel has had easy schedules and Koenning did not.
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I already offered up that it seems like we are talking about two seperate things...I think this confirms it. I'm taking no issue with your assessment of the teams relative strengths....I think you have to use the rankings at the time. For reference:

Sagarin Ratings:

2000 - 163/241, 68th Percentile
2001 - 118/242, 49th Percentile
2002 - 120/240, 50th Percentile

2024 - 109/263, 41st Percentile
2025 - 127/265, 48th Percentile
2026 - 115/266, 43rd Percentile *Season not over*

I had to use the waybackmachine to get the historic sagarin ratings and if they are not accurate, please update them. If these are accurate...that 2000 Wyoming team might be the worst one in UW history?
 
307bball said:
I already offered up that it seems like we are talking about two seperate things...I think this confirms it. I'm taking no issue with your assessment of the teams relative strengths....I think you have to use the rankings at the time. For reference:

Sagarin Ratings:

2000 - 163/241, 68th Percentile
2001 - 118/242, 49th Percentile
2002 - 120/240, 50th Percentile

2024 - 109/263, 41st Percentile
2025 - 127/265, 48th Percentile
2026 - 115/266, 43rd Percentile *Season not over*

I had to use the waybackmachine to get the historic sagarin ratings and if they are not accurate, please update them. If these are accurate...that 2000 Wyoming team might be the worst one in UW history?
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I don’t know where you obtained Sagarin rankings from 2000-2002. I couldn’t locate.

I did locate some composite computer rankings for Wyoming that shows Koenning and Sawvel teams were remarkably close (both bad teams) with a slight edge to Koenning’s teams (despite the W/L Koenning record being worse).

Composite Wyoming FBS Ranks:
2000 - 103
2001 - 100
2002 - 95
2024 - 104
2025 - 102
2026 - 107 (in progress)

Koenning Average — 99.3
Sawvel Average - 104.3

I note that there are more FBS teams now than 2000, so the difference of 5 might be a wash when figuring in the larger amount of teams.
 
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