Mountain West Media Days wrap up with day two focus on new faces and what comes next for 2026

Mountain West Media Days concluded with a day-two recap that centered on familiarity and forecast-setting for the upcoming college football season. The event’s purpose was straightforward, introduce the league’s new faces and help fans understand how teams are thinking about the year ahead, even as the Mountain West opted not to release a formal preseason poll.

Across day two of the conference’s media event, the emphasis was on resetting the conversation for 2026. With Media Days running on a multi-day format, day two served as the point when the conference could broaden the lens beyond opening-day themes and focus more directly on personnel changes, emerging roles, and the storyline each program hopes will carry into August and September.

The day-two write-up also highlighted how the absence of a preseason poll changes the tone of expectation-setting. In many conferences, a preseason ranking provides a quick shorthand for how the league is thought to stack up. Here, the Mountain West’s decision not to publish a poll left room for media, coaches, and players to speak in terms of goals, development, and preparation rather than anchoring discussion to a preseason order that has the force of a consensus.

In that environment, the most consistent “framework” becomes the conference’s recurring awards narratives and the identities behind them. The recap noted that day one included preseason teams and players of the year, and day two continued the work of tying those kinds of expectations to the people expected to carry them. That approach matters because Mountain West football often turns on how quickly teams replace production and how reliably they execute early-season game plans.

For fans and observers, Media Days are also a window into what each program values, whether that means talking up new starters, emphasizing continuity in a coordinator’s approach, or underscoring how the team plans to handle the first weeks of the schedule. Even without a preseason poll, those cues shape how people interpret the season’s start, especially in a conference where matchups between divisional opponents can quickly clarify the postseason picture.

The bigger takeaway from the day-two conclusion is that the Mountain West is asking teams and media alike to build expectations from the ground up. Without a preseason poll, expectations will likely be tested sooner, through performance rather than projection. The next step, for every program, is translating the Media Days messaging into preparation that can withstand the variability of camp and the physical reality of the season’s opening stretch.