How did Boise State University get so good at football? (Meridian: home, high schools)
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How did Boise State University get so get in football? It has not been in the top division for that many years, but their teams have been incredibly successful.
How would Boise State do in a BCS conference? If BSU was in the SEC, they would have the second smallest school in students in the conference. The University of Oklahoma has 10,000 more students than BSU. More students mean more alumni which means more rich boosters who raise and make the money for the stadiums, athletic buildings and so on. BSU is like a mom and pop store near a collection of Big Box stores. Not only is BSU surviving, you are thriving.
Please, no offence, and honestly, I would love to live in Boise, but why Boise? If I was a blue chip player, the idea of living in Idaho would not really impress me as much as living in California, Florida or whatever. Of course, I have always wondered why the University of Hawaii is more or less has a mediocre football team. I mean, where would you like to go to college, Tuscaloosa, Boise or Honolulu? How did BSU draw in the talent?
Some schools who are perenial pushovers sometimes get's their act together, magic happens, and they run all the way. Tulane, for example, was always a doormat team, then one year ran the tables on everyone, won the conference championship and won their bowl game. Something like 13-0. Then they more or less went bust, and now they are a team that gets beat at Homecoming by mediocre SEC squads. The question is, how does BSU keep this level of play?
There are many programs of the same size schools as BSU who have been kind of floundering for years.
The University of Idaho has the best nickname, the Vandals. That's just a bad ass name. I can see their mascot being a Mongol warrior in fur riding a horse eating a turkey leg, or a bunch of wired teenagers spray painting "Montana Sucks" on everything.
How many people go to a home game?
Who's idea was the blue football field? Why?
I love the Humanitarian Bowl! It should be the home of the National Championship game. Cold. Snow. Whiskey in coffee thermos, let's play football!
Think a lot of it is being able to find those diamond in the rough players that got overlooked by the PAC 10 schools. The other thing that I saw is that the coaches are able to find guys that want to play first string at BSU rather than sit on the bench at ASU or UCLA for 4 years. Boise also has at least one direct flight a day to most California cities and to Phoenix every day, so if a recruit wants to go home or have their family come up, it is not that hard.
The blue turf was basically a publicity stunt, it was meant to give the stadium a unique appearance and some notoriety. I think it was Gene Blaymeier that came up with it (but don't quote me).
I think some of the appeal Boise has for those "blue chip" guys is that it's seen as more of a "home town" sort of place. Sort of a way to go "big time" without the "big time" city to go with it That sorta thing appeals to some.
WAC teams can also accept a certain amount of partial and non-qualifiers, unlike most BCS schools. They used to be called "Prop 48" students. Nebraska did it for years until the Big 12 was formed, and the other 11 teams voted against it.
One of the schools that I attended specialized in those "prop 48" type players. If you couldn't read or write and had a criminal record our school would recruit them. Got quite a few players that were good enough to play for a PAC 10 school that way.
Another element is simply the Idaho kids. Like the Green Bay packers, they are used to playing in cold weather, and a lot of them are still tough farm kids who are used to hard physical work that requires endurance. A lot of these rural kids either go into rodeo or football, or both. A lot of them grow up at 4000+ ft. altitudes. All this adds up, especially in late season games.
BSU fans are a tough bunch, too... they'll turn out in the teeth of a blizzard and fill up the stadium, time after time.
It's been like this for many years. The Bronchos just finally forced their way into prominence through their sheer quality as a team, year after year.
How many Idaho kids actually play for the Broncos? Last time I remember seeing the roster it was kids from Arizona and California. Our high schools aren't exactly known for churning out Division I caliber kids in any sport.
I see BSU is also starting to get recruits from Texas ? In particular I noticed that the back who broke the long run for a TD (he goes by JD, or DJ, something like that ?) vs Virginia Tech is from the Houston area where I've spent a lot of time in the past. Also their starting RT is a Houston guy. If BSU can continue to get players out of TX along with CA you can compete with anybody. And I don't mean to be politically incorrect here, but Idaho is of course a small population (what, 2 million ?) and dominated by many pale-face scholastic players. You've got to get the athletes in the big urban areas (LA, Phoenix, DFW, Houston, etc) to compete at the hughrst level.
The kicker is from Meridian, I played against him in High School, he nailed a 50+ yard field goal even then. Kyle Efaw went to Timberline., Mitch Burroughs also played for Meridian. When we played them in high school he was still a freshman or sophmore, but kicked the living **** out of our senior defense, of course my school is notoriously bad at football, so.... J.C. Percy led the team in tackles last year as a freshman and he is from Blackfoot, Id.
But a huge majority of the talent comes from AZ or CA. Kyle Wilson who got drafted in the first round this year came all the way from New Jersey.
The blue turf was basically a publicity stunt, it was meant to give the stadium a unique appearance and some notoriety. I think it was Gene Blaymeier that came up with it (but don't quote me).
I think some of the appeal Boise has for those "blue chip" guys is that it's seen as more of a "home town" sort of place. Sort of a way to go "big time" without the "big time" city to go with it That sorta thing appeals to some.
This is an extremely important element.
The rest is just building off of momentum. Beat #8 Fresno State in 2001. Had Ryan Dinwiddie and an incredibly explosive offense in 2003. Continued through 2005 until Coach Pete took over and we finally built a defense to keep up with our offense.
I really think the coaches just recruit and develop players better. That, and our playbook is supposedly the most intricate in football, and takes a few years to master.
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