Mountain West snubs Lobos in leaving remarkable team out of conference championship

As it turns out, the Lobos never had a chance.

Sunday morning’s announcement that the Mountain West’s answer to breaking a four-way tie atop the football standings went over like a lead balloon in Albuquerque.

New Mexico, which in July was picked to finish 11th in a 12-team league, was the final option in that log jam, according to the computer metrics used by the Mountain West. If you look at the numbers, the Lobos were little more than an afterthought despite a body of work that screams otherwise.

It didn’t take social media to blow up with Lobo fans — and some non-Lobo types — crying foul. The words “robbed” and “snubbed” were mainstays in the comments section of the Mountain West’s X and Instagram posts.

UNLV had a composite average of 45.50 in the MWC’s alphabet soup of “nationally recognized metrics,” the Connelly SP+, ESPN SOR, KPI and SportSource rankings. Boise State was next at 47.75, San Diego State third at 51.00.

Then there’s the Lobos, standing in the back watching everyone else do a happy dance. Their average was 54.75. According to the computers, not in any circumstance were they ever in the running.

So here we have it; UNLV at Boise State for all the marbles. It’s the third year in a row the Rebels and Broncos have met in the title game, and version 3.0 doesn’t feel all that inspiring. Boise State has the worst overall record but will still get home-field advantage in the championship based on the Broncos’ head-to-head win against the Rebels.

It appears the only time head-to-head even matters in MWC tiebreakers is determining what grass to play on. Since not all four teams played one another, computers took the place of common sense. People in a smoke-filled room armed with charts and graphs gave way to a set of algorithms that remove the human equation.

It’s sort of like going to a barber and instead of having a discussion about what to do, the barber scans your head and takes dimensions of your scalp, analyzes the texture of your mop and factors in the barometric pressure of the Chilean coast, enters it into a computer and nods approvingly when it determines your perfect cut actually works better on the guy sitting in that chair over there.

The Lobos and Boise State each went 2-1 against the other three in this mess. San Diego State went 1-1, and UNLV lost both of its games.

The Mountain West drew up the conference schedules months in advance and, rightly, didn’t want to penalize a team for not playing an opponent that wasn’t on their schedule, but at what point must the subjective point of view be discussed?

The name on the front of the jersey clearly plays a role in the computers. Boise State’s reputation precedes itself, and the Broncos started the season as one of the top-ranked teams in the country. Their computer average was akin to starting a 400-meter race at the halfway mark while everyone else was on the other side of the track.

UNLV is a rising national brand that people seem to want to matter. San Diego State shot itself in the foot by not finishing off UNM in this past weekend’s double-OT thriller, although it seems as though the Aztecs would have been third in the metrics even had they won the title outright.

Yet again, there’s the Lobos. In a list of 134 teams at the FBS level, they’ve languished in the 115-to-bottom neighborhood for years. The ground they had to make up compared to Boise State was impossible from the get-go.

The cute little story of the tiny engine that could didn’t have a place in the computers. Those outside the state view things differently from the rising tide of support those inside the borders share. As adorable as it is to have a newcomer try to crash the party, the standard “stand back and let the adults do the work” mentality comes into play.

Fair? Absolutely not.

We knew from the minute Utah State — coached by that [choice words removed] Bronco Mendenhall — choked away an 11-point fourth-quarter lead to Boise State this past weekend that a four-way tie and the Lobos getting left out were inevitable. You could feel it coming.

Alas, onward and upward. The Lobos will likely land in the New Mexico Bowl on Dec. 27, giving fans one final chance to see a team that has defied the odds from the get-go. One more win and they’d become just the second team in school history to win 10 games in a season.

As for the Mountain West title game, we’ll never know.

UNM athletic director Fernando Lovo’s statement on the MWC tiebreaker:

“While we respect the tiebreaking procedures that the Mountain West has in place, including the computer metrics that determined the championship game participants, we are disappointed that our student-athletes, winners of six straight games with victories over two of the league’s top three teams, including San Diego State and UNLV, will not have the opportunity to compete for a championship next Friday.

“This team earned that chance with its play. These young men showed up every week, put in the work, and proved they belonged in the conversation. Their incredible turnaround on the field was matched by the renewed passion of our community, reflected in the top year-over-year attendance increase in the nation.

“Even with today’s disappointment, we are extremely proud of this group. Coach Eck, his staff, and our student-athletes who delivered a season that has changed the trajectory of our program and reminded people across the state and around the country what Lobo football is capable of. What coach Eck has accomplished in one season in Albuquerque is truly remarkable, and there is no doubt he should be considered for national coach of the year honors.

“Our focus now turns to preparing for the program’s first bowl appearance since 2016. This team earned that opportunity, and we look forward to finishing this season on a high note.”