Group of Five contenders shrinking for New Year Six Bowl game

We caution each and every week that there is a lot of football to be played with Week 8 is in the books, but at the same time the list of teams in our weekly pecking order for the Group of Five auto-bid is shrinking.

Boise State nearly lost their leg up after surviving against BYU despite being minus-five in the turnover margin and missed to field goals to win 28-27.

The big story this week is that the number of American Athletic Conference teams in the mix are shrinking week by week. Houston was hanging on by a thread as they needed help to just win their division, but they are basically out after their loss to SMU.

South Florida had the easiest path as they are in the division that did not feature Navy, Memphis, Tulsa or Houston; however, Temple blew that up by topping the Bulls on Friday night.

Navy made a big push to be the best choice from the American as they were able to get the win on Saturday against Memphis, 42-28.

Western Michigan is the other undefeated team from the Group of Five and they were challenged a bit to a much improved Eastern Michigan team but ultimately won 42-28.

With a few of the American teams falling this will dramatically shrink our list of candidates for the New Year’s Six auto-bid from what we had last week.

We will get the rankings in a moment and it will be Boise State, but there is talk about the American champ being ahead of an undefeated Western Michigan.

The College Football Playoff Committee does use some computer ratings and Jeff Sagarian actually has the Broncos of the MAC as the highest rated Group of Five team at 18, but the strength of schedule is 87 (Note, this is prior to Saturday’s results). Navy which is in the drivers seat for the American and are placed at 56th and an SOS of 76.

On to the rankings.

1. Undefeated Boise State
2. Undefeated Western Michigan
3. One-loss Navy
4. One-loss Boise State
5. One-loss San Diego State
6. One-loss Western Michigan
7. Two-loss South Florida
8. Insert your favorite two-loss AAC West Division team
9. One-loss Troy