Group of Five: 2017 college football preseason power rankings

Once again, the Group of Five will receive an automatic bid into a New Year’s Six bowl. Which teams are best poised to nab that lucrative invite in 2017?

For years, teams that played in smaller conferences struggled to gain better access to major bowl games. The Bowl Championship Series, designed as an attempt to determine a definitive national champion each season, had an unintended impact. The BCS gave birth, in turn, to the BCS Buster. Utah, at time time a member of the Mountain West, was the first to break into the exclusive club in 2004 in Urban Meyer’s last season before heading to Florida.

Boise State followed two years later, and college football was never quite the same after that. Hawaii followed in 2007, then Boise State and TCU faced one another in the Fiesta Bowl after the 2009 season. It became an annual tradition to ponder whether one of the mid-major schools might rise high enough in the polls to earn a bid.

But back then, a bid was never guaranteed. One incentive that drives teams like Louisville, Utah, and TCU to move to Power Five conferences is increased access to lucrative bowl opportunities. With the advent of the College Football Playoff in 2014, the system provided an automatic bid for mid-major schools. The top-ranked champion from either the American Athletic Conference, Mountain West, C-USA, MAC or Sun Belt is now guaranteed to play in a big bowl game every year.

In the first three years of the system, champions from three different conferences have earned the bid. Boise State, Houston, and Western Michigan landed in the Fiesta Bowl, Peach Bowl, and Cotton Bowl between 2014 and 2016. Before play begins in the 2017 season, click ahead to see which Group of Five schools have a good shot to earn the berth this year.