Boise State & The Two-Game Season

Ironically, if anything pushes big-time college football more toward a playoff system it could be the rise of Boise State through the traditional human-bias poll system that determines who plays for the BCS Championship. Having crept up through the good-old-boy network of human voters over the past couple of years, Boise finally gets an arbitrary starting position this season – No. 5 in the Coaches Poll – that sets it up for a potential BCS Championship Game appearance.

With No. 1 Alabama and No. 3 Florida meeting at least once, Boise essentially sits at the No. 4 spot to start the season. If No. 2 Ohio State and No. 4 Texas drop a game, the path to Glendale is cleared for Boise – if they go undefeated again.

And therein lies the joke here. Boise rightfully gets credit for scheduling Virginia Tech and Oregon State this season, but beyond those two games the Broncos face nobody. And I mean nobody. Yes, they play in an amazingly weak conference, but when you go from “oh, look at the cute blue field” to “this is a top-five team”, the schedule matters. A lot. They’re playing for the big prize now.

That Boise plays a weak schedule is hardly news. But taking a look at the Rivals 120 (to use a system that ranks all 120 D-1A teams), the schedule-depth disparity between Boise and other top teams is pretty amazing.

I’ll run down a lot of numbers down below, but first let’s look at a chart.

This is a plot of the Rivals ratings of Alabama and Boise State’s opponents, ranked from toughest (1st) to easiest (12th). So in the 1st position, Alabama faces Rivals No. 6 Florida and Boise faces Rivals No. 9 Virginia Tech. And in the 12th Alabama faces D-1AA Georgia State (I give a number of 125 to D-1AA teams to separate them a bit) while Boise faces Rivals No. 119 San Jose State.

Beyond the Va. Tech and Oregon State games, Boise plays nobody ranked in the top half of all D-1A teams by Rivals. Boise’s third-toughest game is against Rivals No. 65 Nevada. By contrast, Alabama’s ninth toughest game is against Rivals No. 61 Mississippi State. Boise can’t help that it plays in a conference (this year) where the second-best team is rated No. 65, and Alabama can’t help that it plays in a conference where four of its five division rivals are ranked No. 44 or better. But when the rewards are tied so closely to human opinions, shouldn’t it matter that a team plays little more than glorified scrimmages 10 out of 12 weeks?

Consider this scenario: Say Boise and Oregon (Rivals No. 4 but Coaches No. 11) both beat their toughest and second-toughest opponents – which would include a common opponent in Rivals No. 22 Oregon State. Boise runs the table playing 10 games against Rivals Nos. 65 – 119 while Oregon loses one of the three other games it faces against Rivals Top 40 teams. Or Ohio State beats Rivals No. 8 Iowa and Rivals No. 11 Wisconsin but loses to Rivals No. 16 Miami or Rivals No. 19 Penn State and finishes 11-1. Would any rational person actually say Boise had proven themselves to be the better team?

But that’s the way things could shake out now that Boise has the full favor of human voters. The conventional wisdom is that the human pollsters would put an undefeated Boise team into the BCS title game over a one-loss team near the top. If this were a matter of subtle differences (say Boise played a No. 40 while Ohio State played a No. 30), that would be one thing. But the schedule spread between Boise and the other contenders is startling.

Now for the numbers overload. If we take the Rivals Top 15 as the set in which teams have a reasonable shot at reaching the BCS Championship Game, here’s how the Boise toughest-to-easiest schedule works out:

- Boise has the 12th-hardest “toughest game” against No. 9 Va. Tech. Twelve of the 15 have Top-10 opponents. TCU has the easiest toughest game against No. 22 Oregon State.

- Boise has the 12th-hardest “second-toughest game” against No. 22 Oregon State. Thirteen of the 15 have Top-25 opponents. Nebraska has the easiest second-toughest game against No. 28 Missouri.

- Boise has the easiest “third-toughest game” against No. 65 Nevada. Next closest is Texas against No. 43 Texas A&M. Twelve of the 15 have Top-40 opponents and eight have Top-25 opponents.

- Boise has the easiest “fourth-toughest game” against No. 66 Fresno State. Next closest is Wisconsin against No. 47 Michigan State. Nine of the 15 have Top-40 opponents and four have Top-25 opponents.

- Boise has the easiest “fifth-toughest game” against No. 71 Wyoming. Next closest is TCU against No. 59 SMU. Seven of the 15 have Top-40 opponents.

- Boise has the easiest “sixth-toughest game” against No. 78 Idaho. Next closest is TCU against No. 71 Wyoming. Four of the 15 have Top-40 opponents.

- Boise has the easiest “seventh-toughest game” against No. 86 Hawaii. Next closest is Ohio State against No. 73 Ohio. Pitt has the sole Top-40 matchup (No. 40 Rutgers) and nine of the 15 play Top-60 (i.e. the top half of all D-1A teams).

- Boise has the easiest “eighth-toughest game” against No. 98 Toledo. Next closest is TCU against No. 77 San Diego State. Just five of the 15 play Top-60 teams.

- Boise has the 14th-hardest “ninth-toughest game” against No. 101 La. Tech. TCU is easiest against No. 105 UNLV. Only one team – Oklahoma against No. 56 Oklahoma State – plays a Top-60 team.

- Boise has the 13th-hardest “tenth-toughest game” against No. 103 Utah State. Wisconsin, against No. 105 UNLV and TCU against No. 107 Colorado State have the easiest. Thirteen of the 15 play Bottom-40 teams.

- Boise has the 11th-hardest “eleventh-toughest game” against No. 113 New Mexico State. Fourteen of the 15 play Bottom-40 teams and ten play Bottom-20 teams.

- Boise has the 5th-hardest “twelfth-toughest game” agains No. 119 San Jose State. Ten of the 15 play D-1AA schools and four play Bottom-20 teams. USC has the hardest easiest game against No. 90 Virginia.

This isn’t a case of a bad team or two being on Boise’s schedule. Pretty much everybody’s schedule turns to junk about eight games in, but Boise is playing eighth-game quality teams from their third-toughest game on. And that’s fine – if your team isn’t trying to be taken seriously as a BCS title contender. But now Boise is being taken seriously.

Maybe Boise has Top-5 talent. Maybe they would roll through a playoff. And maybe they’ll end up in the BCS Championship Game this season. But there’s no way they will have earned it if they do.