Boise State overcomes adversity to earn spot in Mountain West championship game
The Boise State football team will play for a Mountain West title for the sixth time in the past seven years.
The Broncos will travel to Las Vegas to face UNLV in Allegiant Stadium on Saturday (1 p.m. Mountain time, Fox). Boise State last won the championship in 2019.
Boise State, UNLV and San Jose State all finished the regular season 6-2 in conference play. Since they didn’t all play one another in the regular season and no Mountain West team was ranked by the College Football Playoff committee, the three-way tie was broken using the average of four computer ranking systems.
The Mountain West used rankings from Jeff Anderson & Chris Hester, Colley’s Matrix Rankings, Massey Ratings and Peter R. Wolfe for the tiebreaker. UNLV finished with an average of 44.50, while Boise State was at 55.75 and San Jose State at 58.50.
This will be the Rebels’ first appearance in the conference title game.
The winner of the Mountain West championship game will play in the LA Bowl on Saturday, Dec. 16.
Boise State (7-5, 6-2 MW) had to turn its season around to make it to this point. The Broncos had a 4-5 record following a loss to Fresno State on Nov. 4, but they won three straight games to end the regular season, including a 27-19 victory over Air Force on Friday.
Boise State had to overcome adversity last season as well. The Broncos were 2-2 after a loss to UTEP, fired their offensive coordinator and saw their starting quarterback leave the program, but went on to finish the season 10-4 and win the Frisco Bowl.
The Broncos won their final two games this season with interim head coach Spencer Danielson at the helm after former coach Andy Avalos was fired on Nov. 12.
Daielson is just the second interim head coach in NCAA history to take over and lead his team to its conference championship game. Clay Helton did it with USC in 2015.
Boise State is 8-3 all-time against UNLV (9-3, 6-2 MW). The Broncos have won six straight in the series, but the teams haven’t played since 2019. Because they didn’t play this year, the computer rankings had to be used for the tiebreaker.
This story was originally published November 26, 2023 at 9:25 AM.
