Guys like me and players like Eric Drage have confirmed this and even Bronco said as much, the wins are more likely to occur because you are invested in a conference championship race. You loved the 96 cotton bowl season but how can you be careless about the WAC title over Wyoming in Vegas? That's just silly talk.

How did we get to Vegas? By winning our half. How did we win our half? Importance on every game.

All that's lost in Indy after the first loss.

If you think all those wins came from just showing up and winning and not from being focused for conference play and striving to WIN that conference then okay, we just disagree.

But it's the eye on the prize for the players that creates the needed focus to WIN. Competitors like Drage are saying exactly this.

For the record, I followed every conference race, every year and who WON was extremely important to me. Most years it came down to having to beat SDSU, Utah or Wyoming.

I think fans are being disingenuous in hindsight to the importance of winning the conference, IMO.