The No. 10 Boise State Broncos had a very simple situation on Friday night in the Mountain West championship game against No. 20 UNLV.
Win and you are in.
Just take care of business, at home, and punch your ticket to the 2024 College Football Playoff.
The Broncos did exactly that with a 21-7 win that not only gives them the conference title, could very likely give them a bye week into the quarterfinals. They will get the bye week if they are one of the four highest-ranked conference champions when the 12-team field is revealed on Sunday. Given that they entered Friday’s game already in that position, it seems likely they will remain there.
Boise State has mostly dominated its opponents this season, with nine of its 12 wins coming by double-digits, including Friday’s conference title win over UNLV.
The big criticism of Boise State’s resume will be the quality of competition and the fact Friday’s game is its only win over a ranked opponent.
The counter to that is that its only other game against a ranked team was a Week 2 game at Oregon. While Boise State did lose on the road, it was only a three-point game and came down to Oregon winning on a field goal as time expired.
Given that Oregon is the top-ranked team in the country (and has been for most of the season) and that it was a true road game in one of the nation’s toughest stadiums, that should be considered an impressive showing.
The Broncos are being carried into the playoffs by superstar running back — and Heisman hopeful — Ashton Jeanty who had another dominant performance on Friday.
He finished the game with 209 yards on 32 carries, along with his 29th total touchdown of the season on a spectacular 75-yard run just before halftime. It is his sixth 200-yard rushing game of the season.
That performance gives him 2,497 rushing yards on the season, and leaves him just 131 yards behind Barry Sanders for the single-season record in college football history. Jeanty will get at least one more game to try and top that.
While he will have done so in more games than Sanders played, it should not take away from the brilliance of his season.
