Greg McElroy questions how time off can hurt Boise State

Although an accomplishment to earn a bye as a Group of Five team in the College Football Playoff, Greg McElroy might disagree. The ESPN analyst thinks the underdog storyline could now hurt Boise State with three and a half weeks between games.

McElroy spoke about the Broncos’ time off between winning the Mountain West Championship and appearing in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve earlier this week. With 25 days between the two, McElroy thinks that they may have issues in using that motivation as effectively as they had at times throughout the fall.

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“I really am curious – like, really, really am curious,” said McElroy on ‘Always College Football’. “Look, I know that, Boise, all the conversation about the re-seeding and they shouldn’t have this, they shouldn’t have that, whatever. They’ve now had motivation on their side for like four weeks by the time they tee this thing up. Does that start to weigh heavy?

“Like, to me, the whole ‘nobody respects you’ thing is great. That’s awesome – until you’re down 10-0 and then you start to think, ‘Well, now I know why nobody respects us’, you know what I mean?” McElroy said. “Like, I do think time is not on their side in playing the underdog card a little bit going into these games on New Year’s Eve.”

Boise State spent the entire season proving a lot of people wrong about what they could do. They did so to start in what was just a three-point road loss at Oregon, the undefeated No. 1 seed in the field, back at the start of September. They then continued to do it with wins in all of their other eleven games, including a 8-0 mark in the Mountain West by an average of 19 points a win as well as victories over both the remaining schools in the Pac-12.

With that resumé and what all else happened across the country, Boise State earned the No. 3 seed in the CFP behind only Oregon and Georgia. Still, it’s only great opponents from here with the Broncos set to match up with Penn State in the quarterfinals next week. They may not have as much of a psychological advantage in that either with time to have thought about where they stand within the playoff.