GIE projection: near pick'em, Washington State by about two · Washington State 55th, Boise State 60th.
For two years, the story of the Pac-12 was a survival story. Now it's a football one — and this is one of its first real tests.
Boise State at Washington State is a conference game in the rebuilt Pac-12, the eight-team league that pulled Boise, San Diego State, Fresno State, Colorado State, Utah State, and Texas State in alongside the two holdovers, Oregon State and Washington State. It's Boise making a Pac-12 road trip to a program that spent two seasons in limbo waiting for a league to rebuild around it. The model calls the game a coin flip.
Here's where our trench data earns its keep. In a game this close, the rating can't see everything — and one thing it flags is that Boise State's line play is physically bigger than it was a year ago. Across our roster data, the Broncos added roughly 12.5 pounds of average weight across their offensive and defensive fronts year over year, one of the largest trench-mass gains in the FBS. In a projected pick'em, a front that has spent the offseason getting bigger is exactly the sort of edge a two-point margin can't capture. Those rebuilt Bronco fronts now average about 295 pounds a man against Washington State's 281 — a fourteen-pound-per-man gap at the line of scrimmage. Worth watching where the game gets decided.
Realignment made this game exist. The football is what makes it worth your Friday night.