The Enduring Power of Bronco Nation

COURTESY BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY

In the last two decades, the force of Bronco Nation has grown with the Broncos’ prowess on and off the Blue.

BY MICAH DREW

Ask a Boise State University football fan to name the most iconic game in history and only one will roll off their tongue: the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.

The game was the ultimate David and Goliath story, in no little part due to the extensive media coverage leading up to kickoff. That game started a passionate conversion for many Boise State fans, both casually ignorant locals and nationally intrigued sports fans, that continues to this day.

The Broncos, while a successful team in the years leading up to the 2006-2007 season, wore their underdog status proudly. The team was 12-0 on the season and had easily clinched the WAC title. Their opponents, however, were the 11-1 Big Ten Champion Oklahoma Sooners, a team that just two years prior had been ranked No. 2 in the nation, losing its bowl game to top-ranked USC.

Boise State was breaking in a young new head coach, Chris Peterson, who had been promoted up from offensive coordinator after the departure of Dan Hawkins. In his first season in charge, Peterson led the Broncos to a perfect season record and the team was only the second non-BCS conference program to earn a bid to a bowl game of Tostitos Fiesta significance.

For even the most casual football fans who were tangentially aware of the Broncos’ bowl chances on January 4, the three trick plays that secured one of the most exciting wins in college football spill off the tongue like a mantra.

Photo by Karen Day

The 50-yard hook and lateral on 4th and 18 to tie the game with seconds left. An options pass off a snap to the wide receiver for the overtime TD, leaving the Broncos down by one. The Statue of Liberty for a two-point conversion.

The Statue of Liberty is a play of supreme misdirection that rarely is called during game-deciding scenarios. At the bowl game, quarterback Jared Zabransky takes the snap, fakes a pass and hands the ball off behind his back to Ian Johnson, who sprints to the far left corner of the end zone, throws the ball into the crowd and promptly jumps the barrier to where the Broncos cheerleaders were and proposes to his girlfriend on live TV.

If you weren’t paying attention to Boise State then, you can still get chills from the highlight reel on YouTube, which has been viewed nearly four million times.

That game took place 14 years ago and it’s still talked about as having instigated the meteoric rise of our football heroes of the Blue Turf as well as Boise State’s devoted Bronco Nation.

Photo by Karen Day

“It just felt like this wave had taken over the city,” says Brian Murphy, former Idaho Statesman Broncos columnist. “The crazy game, the proposal, the underdog story, it transcended college football and broke into the mainstream at the point.”

Murphy arrived in Boise in January 2006, at what he describes as the perfect moment to chronicle the “best era of Boise State football,” specifically the Chris Peterson and Kellen Moore eras that lasted eight years.

Murphy says that he noticed the shift in Bronco Nation’s size and mentality during his first full season covering the team.

“That season, Utah was a big road game and that’s when I feel like everyone started paying attention,” he says. “And Boise State brought the fan base. It was the first time I saw that it was a deeper fandom than just crowds going to home games.”

The last game of the regular season was a road game in Reno, where the fan base came equipped with Tostitos bags and sombreros.

“Everyone knew what was at stake with that win,” Murphy recalls. “The bandwagon was already full.”

Photo by Karen Day

Boise State’s football history can be broken up into three periods: Pre-Coach Pete, the Coach Pete Era, and Post-Coach Pete.

“Bronco Nation really had its origins in some of the early victories of football coaches even going back to the late 1990s and into the 2000s,” says former Boise State University President Bob Kustra.

Boise State started on its path to nonBCS dominance prior to Coach Pete’s ascendance to head coach in 2006. From 1999-2009, the Broncos won 112 football games, a modern-era record for a decade, only surpassed by Penn and Yale’s records from before 1900. The Broncos were undefeated in seven conference seasons, made nine bowl appearances, and won two Fiesta Bowls.

Chadd Cripe, current editor of the Idaho Statesman, worked as the Broncos’ beat reporter, starting in 2002. He recalls that the media booth didn’t have room to accommodate all the Statesman’s reporters in the early years.

Photo by Karen Day

“The things you really noticed in the 2006-2012 range, is that they picked up so many casual fans,” Cripe says. “People who aren’t necessarily big football fans, who were not tied to Boise State, all these people jumped in who just wanted to support football and watch their games.”

“There was just a massive increase in Bronco Nation,” he adds.

The next year was a “normal” season for Boise State, a 10-3 season with a loss in the Hawaii Bowl. But fans, old and new alike, were bolstered by Coach Pete’s decision to stay at BSU and the arrival of quarterback Kellen Moore, who led the Broncos with a collegiate 50-3 record over four years.

Photo by Karen Day

“Particularly during the Kellen Moore years, we’d show up in places like Fort Collins, Colorado, and San Jose, California, and Boise State fans would be louder than the home fans,” Cripe says. “Not necessarily because there were more of them, but there were enough to make more noise than the home crowd.”

“The merchandise was a big thing you noticed,” Cripe adds. “There were the color schemes, the jerseys, everyone had to have their blue, orange, white outfit for games.”

“Boise is blue and orange now, but it was black and gold when I first got there,” says former president Kustra, who took the job in 2003.

“This is a subject very near and dear to my heart,” he continues. “When it comes to media or historians or just somebody wanting to know what’s going on, I don’t think anyone emphasizes the connection between football and our success as a metropolitan university.”

Photo by Karen Day

Kustra recalls getting an email from then-football coach Dan Hawkins shortly after accepting the job as president. Hawkins wanted to know if Kustra was a football fan and would support the athletic programs, adding that the Broncos were ranked in the top 25 nationally.

“Having come from a completely different career in public service, I’d never followed college rankings in my life,” Kustra recalls. “I thought there must have been another ranking system that put BSU in the national spotlight. It couldn’t have been the NCAA, because I’d never heard of Boise State until I applied for the job.”

It was true though, and Boise State received at least a pre-season top-25 AP poll ranking every year Kustra was president.

After the first Fiesta Bowl victory, Kustra remembers sitting down with a senior and asking how they could take the rest of the university to the same national stage as the football program. The following year, applications to the university spiked 40% and Kustra championed a national student recruitment program, which expanded outof-state enrollment from 7% to nearly 40% over his tenure.

Photo by Karen Day

Kustra remembers a speech he first gave to the Bronco Athletic Association that focused on the Broncos’ penchant for using trick plays on the field.

“I said that trick plays have another name: innovation. Innovation is what’s driving the private business sector in this country. We need to build innovation into everything we do on this campus,” Kustra recalls.

Kustra oversaw one of the biggest expansions to Boise State’s campus in history. In the wake of the 2007 Fiesta Bowl win, BSU spent more than $85 million to construct the Stueckle Sky Center, Caven Williams Sports Complex, Bleymaier Football Center, Dona Larson Park, and more, as well as $450 million in the construction of academic buildings across campus.

Kustra says that innovation seeped into the consciousness of the university culture and led to the development of new departments as well as a Carnegie distinction as a doctoral research university and national recognition for its academic programs.

Photo by Karen Day

“It definitely stemmed from the success of the team,” Kustra says. “A lot of our top-notch faculty wouldn’t have found their way there if not for the hoopla the football program brought us initially.”

In two decades, Bronco Nation transformed from a base of local diehards to a robust, nationwide fan base that transcends what happens on the Blue. Current BSU President, Dr. Marlene Tromp, is also an enthusiastic convert with a wardrobe of blue and orange eyeglasses for game days. She thinks the value of devoted fandom expands beyond the scrimmage line, saying “We love Bronco Nation. Just as they cheer us on in athletic competition, they support us in trail-blazing teaching, research, and service. This ‘Blue Turf Thinking’ helped us earn recognition as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative National Universities.” *

To the benefit of all, Bronco Nation has redefined the tailgating party forever.

*Top 50 Most Innovative National Universities, according to U.S. News & World Report.