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College Football Playoff Rankings: Projecting Boise State in the Week 14 Top 25

With the Mountain division title in hand, how will Boise State look to the committee this week?

Does another win equal another move up?

The Boise State Broncos have picked a good time to start peaking.

Since their narrow escape against Wyoming a few weeks ago, Bryan Harsin’s boys in blue have notched a pair of wins by a combined 68 points, most recently throttling Utah State to secure another Mountain division title.

Though their championship rematch with Hawaii will have to wait another week, there’s still plenty of reason to notch another win in the season finale at Colorado State.

Will they make up any ground on the AAC foes in front of them in this week’s College Football Playoff rankings? As always, keep this in mind first: A lot can change in a week and in the CFP era and things have definitely tended to change quite a bit over the course of a month or so.

Here’s a quick recap of the weekend that was and what it might mean.

Who lost?

From the top:

#6 Oregon lost on the road to Arizona State, 31-28
#8 Penn State lost on the road to #2 Ohio State, 28-17
#25 SMU lost on the road to Navy, 35-28

Is that it? The two top-ten teams aren’t likely to fall far enough to make a difference for Boise State, though at least we can finally bid adieu to the Mustangs and their good fortune in one-score games.

By Way of Comparison: How did the rest of the Group of 5 fare?

#18 Memphis defeated South Florida on the road, 49-10
#19 Cincinnati defeated Temple at home, 15-13
#24 Appalachian State defeated Texas State at home, 35-13

In case you had any question about why the Tigers jumped the Bearcats in last week’s rankings, the newest piece of justification for that was unceremoniously demonstrated on USF in Tampa on Saturday. Cincinnati, meanwhile, tallied their fourth win of the year by exactly three points and now head to Memphis on Saturday in what probably amounts to a de facto elimination game in this hunt.

We mentioned Navy already and the Midshipmen may now have the juice to jump back into the top 25 themselves. Better yet, they still have a chance to create some havoc in the rankings if they can get to the AAC title game, but they’ll need Cincinnati to overcome its recent blase performances and beat Memphis to do so.

App State isn’t likely to lose any ground after another comfortable Sun Belt victory, but they look like the longest of longshots to claim the top spot. The Mountaineers need to beat Troy in a walk, then you’re betting on a situation where Navy beats Houston, Cincinnati beats Memphis, and Boise State and Hawaii both lose this weekend. After that, App State will need to crush Louisiana-Lafayette, then hope Navy wins the AAC and Hawaii wins the Mountain West. That… may be asking a lot.

What about Air Force?

Air Force could make it into the top 25, but at this point it wouldn’t be much more than a nicety. Remember, a Group of 5 must win their conference in order to claim the New Year’s Six bowl spot, so now that the Mountain West championship is already set between Boise State and Hawaii, the Falcons can’t do that. Better luck next year.

So what do I think the top 25 will look like? Read on.

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