College Football Playoff Thread: Fiesta Bowl Edition

Tonight starts the quarterfinals of the playoffs, with the 6 seed Penn State and the 3 seed Boise State facing off in the Fiesta Bowl. Interesting trivia–these two teams are a combined 10-0 in Fiesta Bowl appearances.
The first round games proved rather awful, with 4 blowouts. For all we are excited about college football actually having a real playoff, blowouts in big games have been endemic in recent years. Remember two years ago when Georgia beat TCU in the championship game 65-7? Ugh. None of the four games last week were quite that bad, but none of them were exactly good either.
Well, now we get these off-balance quarterfinals matchups thanks to the ACC and Big 12 pretending like they still mattered and demanding the top 4 conference champions get byes. So the real national championship game is the Rose Bowl tomorrow between Oregon and Ohio State, while Georgia and Notre Dame might be the other two of the 4 best teams in the country and they face each other too and the winner then plays the Oregon-Ohio State winner. Meanwhile, Texas more or less has a breezy path to the title game. Well, it is what it is.
As for this game, I like Boise State +11.5. Penn State did play a nice game last week at home against SMU, though it was also a case of the atmosphere being just too big for the SMU QB who started the game with two pick sixes. Boise is a hell of a good team though. They came the closest of anyone to beating Oregon and that was in Eugene. Now, that was a long time ago and in the middle of that game, Oregon figured out its offensive line and went from there. But I will say this–Ashton Jeanty is the Real Thing at running back. That guy is an absolute stud and he should be a great NFL player too. They also have an offensive line good enough to handle a good Penn State defensive front. No one has stopped Jeanty, including Oregon’s top 15 defense with a couple of first or second round picks on the defensive line. But is Boise QB Maddux Madsen really good enough to take Boise over the top? Can anyone defend Tyler Warren?
I do think Boise could win this game. Drew Allar remains inconsistent and Boise can be opportunistic. But certainly Penn State has more talent. I do think it will be closer than a lot of people expect and that’s why I will take Boise +11.5.