Fans still have hope of winning a conference championship, which creates more viewers on television and more fans in the stands, which means more money for the program. Also, coaches and players have more motivation/hope/energy going into early conference games, knowing that they can still go to a slotted bowl game if you win your conference.
Right now, we are playing for absolutely nothing! No one cares about the rest of our season, except to maybe see how our back-up quarterback does compared to Nelson. Even if we did lose 2 or 3 MWC games, these next couple of games would really matter in a conference race.
The point is that games 5-7 of the season have a lot riding on them when you play in a conference. Currently, our games 5-7 are meaningless.