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College Football Playoff Rankings: Will Boise State, San Diego State Start in the Top 25?

The Broncos and Aztecs will contend for a New Year’s Six bowl, but will they crack the first College Football Playoff rankings this week? We make our first projection.

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One is all but guaranteed, the other is up in the air.

The first College Football Playoff rankings of 2019 will be unveiled on Tuesday, which means that the race to the Cotton Bowl is about to get a whole lot more interesting.

The Boise State Broncos and San Diego State Aztecs, with just one loss apiece, figure to be in the mix for a potentially crowded Group of 5 field that thinned only slightly this past weekend (our condolences to Appalachian State, but not so much to SMU). And now that there are no undefeated G5 teams left standing, the free for all seems likely to take a lot of unpredictable turns before the dust is settled. Will Boise State and San Diego State both make the initial cut, though?

The first thing to keep in mind: A lot can change in a week and in the College Football Playoff era, things have definitely tended to change quite a bit over the course of a month or so, so missing the initial cut is anything but a harbinger of doom.

What about Air Force, you might ask? There’s no doubt the Falcons might have more momentum than any other team in the Mountain West right now, as the Falcons actually lead the conference by SP+ and rank 38th nationally in Jeff Sagarin’s rankings. Their fourth-quarter collapse at Navy seems particularly damaging, though, so they may not even be college football’s best service academy team right now. They are better classified as lurkers until further notice, but a few more wins and a few breaks could help them close the distance.

Let’s examine the case for both Mountain West contenders: