New Year’s Six race: Can Wyoming find its way into a big time bowl game?

The initial College Football Playoff rankings rightfully placed Western Michigan as the highest rated Group of Five team at No. 23 and Boise State was one spot behind at 24th.

Both Broncos won over the weekend with Western Michigan winning on Tuesday night’s #MACtion against Ball State and Boise State had a tougher than expected challenge against San Jose State but pulled out in the end.

San Diego State remains near the top with another dominant performance in a 55-0 blowout win over Hawaii and are in line to pass Western Michigan if they slip up and do not win the MAC.

Navy beat Notre Dame but the Irish might not even make a bowl game this year so that win is not all that impressive as it would be in most years.

Tulsa comes in behind Navy but one of the two will fall out of the West Division race in the American as the two face off against each other in Annapolis next week.

In reality this is very likely a three-team race with Western Michigan, San Diego State and then a distant third is Boise State who needs help to make it to the conference title game.

Wyoming is the team that is standing in the way of Boise State getting to the conference title game and a potential big money game. The Cowboys kept their long shot bid up by scoring 52 points on Utah State to stay undefeated in league play.

Wyoming is hanging around but they need Western Michigan to lose two games and likely even need the American champion to have three losses to get the Cowboys into a New Year’s Six Bowl game. Also, Wyoming would need to beat San Diego State in the Mountain West title game.

Here is the pecking order this week.

1. Undefeated Western Michigan
2. One-loss San Diego State
3. One-loss Boise State
4. Two-loss Navy
5. Two-loss Tulsa
6. Two-loss Wyoming
7. One-loss Troy
8. Two-loss Toledo