Boise, Idaho – Is it time for college football to start taking Boise State seriously? Brace yourself, America. It might be difficult to grasp.
Its football field looks like something you’d find in the back room of Chuck E. Cheese. Boise State’s leading rusher was recruited by Boise State and … no one else. The football coach looks like the Theta Chi rush chairman, and the number of its opponents in The Associated Press Top 25 equals the amount of respect it receives in some regions of the country.
Zero.
Well, tough. The Broncos are taking dead aim at a coveted prize no mid-major has achieved since the start of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998. They are in the direct path of the Fiesta Bowl and a possible $14 million date with Texas. Yeah, sure, Utah went to the Fiesta Bowl two seasons ago. But the Utes mopped up a 19th-ranked Pittsburgh team that received a BCS bid only because the coyote-ugly Big East received an automatic invite.
Boise State could be the first team from a non-BCS conference to butt heads with a true giant, a defending national champion, ranked fourth and possibly the best one-loss team in America. Think of the best day on the American sports calendar: the first round of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
Boise State-Texas has the same potential theater as George Mason upsetting Connecticut in March.
“As a little kid, I dreamt of playing for Michigan against those teams every week,” Boise State tailback Ian Johnson said. “And now to see another piece of my dream come true, it’s the greatest thing in the world.”
The Broncos are not there yet. Boise State (9-0, 5-0 Western Athletic Conference) must win Saturday at third-place San Jose State (6-2, 3-1), at home against Utah State (1-8, 1-4) and Nov. 25 at Nevada (6-3, 3-2).
But today the Broncos are sitting as pretty as the 2,700 acres of parks dotting this wonderful town, and the prospects are as bright as their blue Smurf turf in Bronco Stadium. This year, the BCS pried open its four-bowl party to add a fifth game, allowing any team from one of the five smaller non-BCS conferences to qualify if it finishes in the top 12 in the BCS rankings, or in the top 16 and ahead of a champion from one of the six huge BCS conferences.
Boise State is 14th, four spots ahead of Georgia Tech, the top team in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Talk to some around the country, however, and it’s as if some vagabond wanted to crash their daughter’s cotillion.
“I’m a strong advocate of strength of schedule,” Clemson coach Tommy Bowden said this week on the ACC coaches’ call. “Come over here and face Miami, Georgia Tech, N.C. State. When you have to do that on a week-to-week basis, it takes its toll. When I was at (11-0) Tulane (in 1998), I didn’t think we merited a BCS bid, and I didn’t vote (Boise State) as high because of that.”
On the surface, many could agree with Bowden. The combined record for Boise State’s opponents is 33-40, not counting I-AA Sacramento State (4-5). Sagarin, one of the six computer ratings in the BCS formula, ranks Boise State’s schedule 104th.
But look beyond the rankings. It annihilated Oregon State, such a dog that the Beavers went out and knocked off third-ranked Southern California two weeks ago and are now 24th in the BCS. Boise State beat bowl-bound Hawaii and won 36-3 at Utah, favored to contend in the Mountain West.
Better yet, listen to other coaches. Oregon State coach Mike Riley was asked whether Boise State could compete with the nation’s top teams.
“Not athletically, but on a given Saturday they can give one of those a game,” he said. “Two times in the last four games they’ve beaten the heck out of us. We’ve beaten them in close games, so they have the edge. I have a lot of respect for them. They always find a way to put points on the board, and they’re sound defensively.”
Added Johnson: “We work just as hard if not harder than any team in the country. So who’s to say a guy working just as hard as someone else doesn’t deserve something, especially when some of the bigger conferences are getting a little bit weaker?”
The Broncos are deflecting the hype, knowing one loss could send them crashing to Boise’s own MPC Computers Bowl, and no one but the good fans on the West Coast know how good San Jose State and Nevada are. They also know they are more Godzilla than Cinderella to some.
“It’s funny,” coach Chris Petersen said, “because half the country loves you because you’re the underdog, and the people that we play are totally against us because we’re kind of the New York Yankees and you’re kind of always up there and they want you to get knocked off.”
Petersen, in matching blue Boise State T-shirt and shorts with a baby face and short black hair, looks younger than 41. But he’s part of the Cal-Davis coaching mafia that produced Oregon’s Mike Bellotti, Texas Christian’s Gary Patterson and Colorado’s Dan Hawkins.
Petersen, the former offensive coordinator, has boosted quarterback Jared Zabransky’s rating from 130.0 last year to 156.1, good for 12th nationally. The Broncos are second with 40.3 points a game. Petersen tweaked the high-risk pressing defense for a more conservative zone pass coverage. Opponents’ points have dropped from 24.4 a game to 16.7 and yards from 369.7 a game to 300.9.
A veteran offensive line, which Petersen called “the difference” this year, has launched Johnson into a Heisman campaign with 146.3 yards a game (fourth nationally) and 20 touchdowns (first).
Johnson is typical of the talent Boise State unearths. He said his coach at Damien High in San Dimas, Calif., blackballed him from recruiters despite rushing for 3,627 yards and 45 TDs in three years. Johnson declined to say why – “It was nothing I did,” he said – but Boise State discovered him while scouting an opponent, current Oregon rover Patrick Chung.
Today, Johnson and Boise State are the heroes of college football’s little guys.
“I don’t know how people get my e-mail,” Johnson said, “but I get e-mails all the time saying: ‘Hey, I’m from Connecticut. I just wanted to say we’re rooting for you guys. We want you guys to break the system.”‘
They are breaking it. Seriously.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
