Imagine this: a college football team wins a BCS bowl game over a previously undefeated team, after they beat the Pac-10 champion earlier in the season. It looks forward to returning 21 starters, including an All-American quarterback who finished 7th in the Heisman voting, a 1,000-yard rusher, a 1,000-yard receiver and a coach with a career winning percentage over 92 percent.
Surely this hypothetical team would be a logical choice for the No. 1 spot in the following season’s preseason AP Poll?
Don’t count on it. This “hypothetical” team is actually the Boise State Broncos, so logic will be ignored in favor of unreasonable doubt. It doesn’t matter how many times the Broncos defy expectations and rise to the challenge; no one will ever give them credit.
Boise State is 49-4 in four seasons under coach Chris Petersen, completing an undefeated regular season in three of those years.
Some people point to those four losses to detract from the Broncos. However, two of them came against BCS participant Hawaii (2007), and a 1-point Poinsettia Bowl loss to 11-2 TCU (2008), neither of which can be considered a bad loss. Even the elite teams lose sometimes, especially on the road.
Sure, they should have beaten Washington and East Carolina in 2007, but every elite team has a few losses they should have won: Ole Miss over Florida (2008), Arkansas and Kentucky over LSU (2007), Oregon State over USC (2006 and 2008) and so on.
And notice how three of those losses came in 2007, Boise State’s sole down year. Every great team has a down year, like Florida and Ohio State in 2004, Oklahoma in 2009, LSU in 2008. Boise State’s other three seasons have been top-notch.
I bring these up not to cut down Boise State or devalue my own point; I’m merely trying to cut out criticism right from the start.
Another other knock on Boise State is that they “don’t play anybody.” Again, a simple look at the schedule shows that to be untrue. In the last four years, they have defeated a 10-win Oregon State and 10-win Oregon teams twice. And who can forget the Fiesta Bowl win over Oklahoma, one of the greatest college football games ever? They are one of only five teams to be undefeated in multiple BCS bowl games.
The Broncos’ problem is that no one will play them. Sure, they would love to get into a better conference than the WAC, but the arrogant Pac-10 isn’t about to let them in, based on self-righteous image that schools like Oregon State are among the nation’s elite academic institutions. Rumor says Boise State may be moving to the Mountain West, which will at least give them yearly games against Utah, BYU and TCU, but I’m sure even then people would still cut them down.
On the nonconference front, no one will play them either. In 2009, it was reported that Boise State had contacted over 40 major-conference schools and offered even a one-time road game there, just to try to get more legitimate games on the schedule, and all 40 turned them down. What are the Broncos supposed to do? They don’t want to fill their schedule up with patsies but that’s all they can get. It’s not really fair to punish the Broncos for this.
It’s clear Boise State’s not some phantom flash in the pan like 1998 Tulane, 1999 Marshall or even what Boise State probably was in the early 2000s. They have begun to build an elite program that usually beats high-level teams. All they are lacking is respect.
Next year the Broncos play Virginia Tech in a “neutral” game in Washington, DC. (Of course the Hokies will not be making a return trip to Boise.) I’d definitely bet on the Broncos to win, but yet again, I’m sure everyone will still doubt them.
So I must ask, what more does Boise State have to do? Is going 6-2 against 10-win teams over the past four seasons not enough? How about going 3-1 against BCS participants in those years? Or the 92.5 winning percentage? How many times must they face a tough challenge and prevail before they get the credit they deserve?