Boise State earned a bye in the first round of the College Football Playoff

Forget random metrics and data points and the eye test, the prisoner of the moment à la carte for the College Football Playoff selection committee.

Boise State nailed them all.

The No. 10 Broncos made it very easy for the committee with Friday night’s 21-7 win over No. 19 UNLV for the Mountain West Conference championship. They left no doubt.

The Broncos have 12 wins. They won a conference championship. Their two wins against the Rebels are more wins against the top 25 team in the College Football Playoff than against any of the four teams competing in the Big 12 and ACC Championship Games.

They hit every key metric the committee set — including the highest loss of any player in the field — and left no doubt: They deserve one of the four first-round byes to the top-seeded conference champions.

Do the right thing, College Football Selection Committee. Give the Broncos a first-round bye.

This isn’t about star duster Ashton Jeanty’s remarkable, Heisman Trophy-worthy season. Or the biggest win in school history.

This is about a program that has advanced to the BCS and CFP postseasons for the past two decades and, for one reason or another, has never made it. Now that the Broncos have hit all of their moving CFP metrics, there’s no getting around it.

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If Boise State happens to not receive a bye, a top-eight finish — which guarantees a home game in the first round — is a lock. At this point, it is impossible for the committee to use Boise State’s conference schedule against it unless the committee has used Indiana and Penn State’s weak conference schedules against it. Or even SMUs.

No matter what happens Saturday, Boise State will have more wins than the Big 12 champion (Arizona State or Iowa State), and only SMU can reach 12 wins from the ACC.

And since the CFP committee isn’t focused on strength of schedule and has clearly favored wins over everything else (hello, Indiana), we’re left with comparing losses. No one in the nation has a better loss than Boise State, which lost to No. 1 Oregon on the final play of the game.

The Ducks needed a punt return for a touchdown, a kickoff return for a touchdown and a game-winning field goal to secure a controversial victory. The officials stuck to the call on the field that Oregon’s Noah Whittington didn’t drop the football before crossing the end zone (which he clearly did) to tie the game at 34. A questionable pass interference penalty gave the ball away to Boise State 28.

The best win among the other four teams in the ACC and Big 12 is a win over Brigham Young for Arizona State. This is the only ranking win for the four schools. A Sun Devils win against Iowa State would equal Boise State’s two wins in the rankings.

Most notably, these metrics and data points: Boise State began the week five spots ahead of No. 15 ASU and six spots ahead of No. 16 Iowa State. Only SMU is ahead of the Broncos at No. 8 — but SMU’s win over Clemson would be the first.

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Boise State earned a bye in the first round of the College Football Playoff

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