The Mountain West Conference can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel for its beleaguered football teams.

After absorbing all manner of defeats for the past three weeks against outside competition — from the ignominious (North Dakota 24, Wyoming 13) to the ridiculously lopsided (Mississippi 73, Fresno State 21) — the nonconference schedule is mercifully winding down.

After this week, 45 of the remaining 54 games of the regular season will be against beatable opposition — fellow Mountain West opponents.

The shift to wholesale MWC games can’t come soon enough for a conference whose teams have gone a dreadful 2-21 against Football Bowl Subdivision members.

To put it in perspective, name the only two MWC members to beat any fellow FBS foe, large or small, this season?

Hint: Both occurred in the season’s first week.

Answer: Hawaii over Colorado and Boise State holding off Washington.

Which is why UH and Boise State are currently the only teams in the 12-member conference with winning records who have yet to play a conference game.

Whether it stays that way after UH ventures to Wisconsin and Boise State goes to Virginia this week remains to be seen.

Otherwise, it has been pretty bleak out there with the MWC going 2-16 against so-called Power Five conference opposition and a very disturbing 0-5 against fellow mid-and-low major FBS foes.

Losing to the likes of Ohio State and Texas A&M is one thing, but tumbling to South Alabama, North Dakota and Eastern Michigan — and on the home fields?

If not for a 10-1 record against out-manned Football Champion Subdivision opponents in the form of Abilene Christian, Savannah State, UC Davis, etc., there would be no joy in MWC-ville.

What is especially troubling is that the lower-level Power Five teams that MWC teams could knock off with some regularity, such as Washington State, Oregon State and Colorado, are rarely victims anymore. MWC teams lost to all three this past week, and you have to wonder if that is the surest sign yet of the ever-widening divide between the Power Five and everybody else?

Time was when MWC teams could compete for players on occasion with the bottom of the Pac-12 and, by doing so, win some games.

But as the money has mounted for the Power Five schools, who are making upwards of $18 million a year each from TV and getting the lion’s share of BCS and, now, championship playoff, moolah, so has the spending gap. You see it in facilities, coaching salaries and, most recently, in cost of attendance stipends.

So, as San Diego State wanders into Happy Valley (Penn State), UH ventures to Camp Randall Stadium (Wisconsin) and other MWC members scatter across the landscape this week, there is hope in knowing that the nonconference beatings will shortly cease.

The Mountain West teams can find comfort in knowing that they will shortly be in the thick of the conference schedule. Because this year, more than ever before, misery loves company and the MWC is the place to find it.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.