There isn't a Gonzaga in college football because the bowls aren't the tournament.
Boise State COULD'VE been a Gonzaga with tougher scheduling and a halfway-decent bowl slot. You're in a horse-shit conference if the champ goes to the Las Vegas bowl every year. That's on them.
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If Boise kept going 11-1 every year (they didn't) AND gradually went to better bowls over time (they didn't), and won most of those bowls (not all), they'd eventually be a playoff participant.
But Boise hasn't been as good as it needed to be and all of the other infrastructure hurdles that made it moot anyway.
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The point is, whenever Gonzaga started to matter, they were initially seeded poorly and after outperforming their seedings over many years, started to get seeded more highly. That's not some sort of big reveal.