How do College Football Playoff chances look for Boise State? Can Broncos host a game?
The first College Football Playoff rankings of the season will be announced on Tuesday, and thanks to the first-ever, 12-team, expanded postseason, Boise State stands a good chance of making the field.
While fans have been paying attention to Boise State’s Associated Press Top 25 and Coaches’ Poll rankings, the CFP rankings are based on different metrics and decided by a 13-person committee, some of whom are former college players and coaches.
The Top 25 rankings can be a good indicator of where teams might sit, but the committee generally looks harder at schedule strength and often favors the major conferences. The Broncos, whose only loss this season is to No. 1 Oregon on a last-second field goal, earned the No. 12 spot in Sunday’s latest AP poll. It’s the highest the Broncos have been ranked since the 2011 season when Chris Petersen was still on the sideline and Kellen Moore suited up under center.
Here’s a look at how the CFP playoff rankings work and how the Broncos can be there at the end of the season. They seemingly have a very clear path at this point: win out this season, and then win the Mountain West championship game.
What is the College Football Playoff poll?
This year’s CFP selection committee comprises six athletic directors from six different conferences and seven “at-large” members, executive director Rich Clark outlined to reporters last week. Among the members are Mike Riley, the former Oregon State and Nebraska coach, and Chris Ault, a longtime head coach at one of Boise State’s rivals, Nevada.
The CFP will release weekly updated rankings starting Tuesday — yes, Election Day, in an odd bit of scheduling — concluding with the CFP Selection Show on Sunday, Dec. 8.
From the 2014 season through last year, the CFP selection committee ranked its top 25 schools nationwide, even though only the top four earned a berth into the national championship semifinals. It didn’t matter what conference those teams played in — it was the best four teams in the nation in the eyes of the committee.
Under the new 12-team playoff format, the committee will continue to rank its top 25 teams — and now it will really matter who is sitting in, say, the No. 8 or No. 11 spot. It also will greatly matter which Group of Five conference team is ranked the highest. An automatic bid will go to the G5 league champion with the best ranking — the bid Boise State will be seeking.
So how do the new CFP bids work?
The champions of the Power Four conferences — Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and SEC — will automatically earn bids. The highest-ranked champ from the Mountain West, AAC, Conference USA, MAC or Sun Belt will get the fifth auto berth. Then there will be seven at-large teams.
It doesn’t matter where in the CFP rankings any conference champion is ranked, except as it pertains to the first-round byes, which will go to the four highest-ranked league champs. It’s been presumed by college football pundits that the winners of the Big Four conferences get those byes, but that’s not set in stone.
The conference champion that does not get a bye will slot into the playoffs based on its ranking. For example, if that league title winner is ranked No. 12, they will get the 12 seed and play a first-round game at the No. 5 seed.
The rest of the bracket is filled out with at-large teams based solely on the final CFP rankings, working around the conference champions’ rankings.
What could all of this mean for Boise State?
The best way to illustrate what Tuesday’s first rankings could look like is to use the current AP rankings to make a mock bracket.
The following graphic, courtesy of On3 Sports, shows the AP Top 25 for week 11.
For conference champions, we’ll assume the current conference leaders take those spots and hand them the automatic bids: No. 1 Oregon (Big 10), No. 2 Georgia (SEC), No. 4 Miami (ACC), No. 9 BYU (Big 12) and No. 12 Boise State (Mountain West).
In this scenario, that would give these four teams the following seeds and a bye:
No. 1 Oregon
No. 2 Georgia
No. 3 Miami
No. 4 BYU
As the lowest-ranked conference champion, Boise State would be the No. 12 seed and play at 5 seed Ohio State. Using the current AP rankings, the rest of the bracket would be filled out as follows: 11 seed Alabama at 6 seed Texas; 10 seed Notre Dame at 7 seed Penn State; and 9 seed Indiana at 8 seed Tennessee.
Here’s that in bracket form courtesy of the social media account @RedditCFB.
Will Boise State play in a bowl game?
If Boise State makes the CFP but doesn’t get a first-round bye or win its opening game, then the Broncos won’t play in an official bowl game this season. That’s because the first-round contests are separate from the traditional bowl format. The quarterfinals and semifinals all will be bowl games.
Clark said last week that the CFP will attempt to honor bowl game traditions. That means the SEC champion would play in the Sugar Bowl if possible and the Big Ten champ in the Rose Bowl. Proximity also would be considered, meaning in the mock bracket we created this week, Miami would play in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta and BYU in the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona.
There are still a bunch of games to be played, but with the Big 12 having a not-so-stellar season overall, it’s possible that Boise State could get a first-round bye by being ranked higher than BYU, Iowa State or Colorado at the end. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.
If Boise State did make that happen, it probably would mean the Broncos slot into the Fiesta Bowl for the quarterfinals. But that’s looking way, way ahead.
The first-round games in the playoffs will be Dec. 20-21; the quarterfinals Dec. 31-Jan. 1; the semifinals in the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl on Jan. 9-10; and the national championship game on Monday, Jan. 20, in Atlanta.