Boise blooms into a football power
OU football: No small potatoes

By George Schroeder

Published: December 17, 2006

BOISE, Idaho — The phrase — "Rose Bowl 2000” — was something they whispered only to each other.

Less a dream than an inside joke, really. But there was no doubt John Keiser, Boise State's president, and Gene Bleymaier, the school's athletic director, were aiming high when, some 15 years ago, they made a push to elevate the football program to NCAA Division I-A.

Aiming too high, apparently. At least for the time.

Shortly after the state board of education shot down his proposal, Keiser lost his job. Fired for the effort.

And so, all these years later, you'd forgive Keiser if he were crowing, "I told you so.” He isn't.

"I don't have to,” Keiser said.

Rose Bowl 2000? Not quite.

But Fiesta Bowl 2007 has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

"Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, whatever,” said Keiser, now retired and living in Boise. "We believed … the program could compete on a national level.”

But then Keiser stops, and says something that's being said a lot in the Treasure Valley these days: "It's just amazing.”

Really, that describes the entire story, which starts long before Keiser's ill-fated push toward I-A status.

It began with a junior college that morphed into a four-year college and eventually into the state's largest university. With a football program that played in Junior Rose Bowls and Potato Bowls, then moved on to Camellia Bowls — and then, years later, considered playing in the hometown Humanitarian Bowl an unbelievable accomplishment.

Solid, winning football. But Idahoans understood their status.

"Pretty small potatoes,” said Paul Schneider, the Broncos' longtime radio broadcaster.

Not anymore, though. On Jan. 1, the Broncos get their shot at the big-time. They're calling the Fiesta Bowl date with Oklahoma the biggest sports event in the state's history.

"Boy, it's lit this place up,” Boise Mayor David Bieter said. "I mean, it really has. I don't think a lot of people saw this coming.”

How could they have?

Boise has always been a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of place. The city sprouted in the 1860s, near an Army fort along the Oregon Trail, and grew when gold was discovered.

Today, the city has grown to 200,000 (with a metropolitan population of twice that), and ranks high on various national lists: cleanest, safest, most livable, etc. Those plaudits, along with a healthy corporate base, have helped fuel rapid growth, which longtime residents view with mixed emotions; it's not been too long since signs posted near the California border announced to visitors (or new residents): "Don't Californicate Idaho.”

It's easy to understand the sentiment. A pristine river runs through the heart of the city. A five-minute drive out of town, and you're in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains; 25 more minutes, and you're skiing. Fifteen minutes in the other direction, and a high desert plain is filled with ranches and potato farms.

Add a thriving, surprising corporate base to a can-do, Western spirit, and it's little wonder that Boise is getting bigger. And there's plenty of room for more growth in the Treasure Valley.

"We're still small potatoes,” said Milford Terrell, a member of the state board of education and owner of a local plumbing company, using a familiar phrase. "But we're growing. … Really, we're the new frontier.”

Terrell, who is a longtime Boise State booster, was talking about the region and the school at the same time. And it's appropriate.

"It's hard to tell the story of one without the other,” said Bieter, the mayor.

And there's no one better to tell the story of Boise State football than Lyle Smith, who essentially started it all.

Now 90, the former coach and athletic director remains a regular at home games — the famous blue field bears his name — and plans to attend the Fiesta Bowl.

"The progression they've made has been kind of normal,” Smith said, and with 60 years of perspective, maybe that's true.

In 1932, the Episcopal church started a junior college. When Smith arrived 15 years later, the campus consisted of six buildings; the school had around 700 students and a fledgling football program.

As coach of Boise Junior College from 1947-67, Smith was 162-26-5. His first three teams were undefeated — a 33-game winning streak. In 1958, the Broncos won the junior college national championship.

Told his tenure sounds a little like what Bud Wilkinson was doing at Oklahoma at the same time, Smith chuckled. He attended several coaching clinics featuring Wilkinson.

But at the time, there wasn't much comparison.

The Broncos played in a 10,000-seat, wooden stadium that was constructed in 1950 from surplus lumber bought from a Washington military base. Although they were winning big, they were beating Taft and Tyler.

Oklahoma?

"Maybe we'd have thought about playing Northeastern Oklahoma,” Smith said.

That held true even after the junior college became a four-year school, in the late 1960s. At what would later become the NCAA Division II level, Boise State College beat Chico State in the 1971 Camellia Bowl. In 1980, the Broncos beat Eastern Kentucky for the I-AA national championship. In 1986, they installed that blue turf.

Even that seems like ancient history. Now a university, Boise State's enrollment has grown to more than 19,000 — largest in the state. And the football program has grown in similar fashion.

"We kind of had to feel our way along,” Smith said. "We didn't know just where we were headed. But it has bloomed from there.”

By 1991, and Keiser's ill-fated push toward I-A, Boise State featured a good I-AA program, but still played second-fiddle – in football, and in prestige – to the University of Idaho.

Keiser, a former football player himself (at Eastern Illinois), and Bleymaier were among those who believed the football program could and should compete at a higher level. They worked to secure an invitation to join the Big West Conference (leaving the Big Sky).

Idaho politics intervened.

The University of Idaho, almost 300 miles north in Moscow, had been the state's flagship school since, well, before Idaho was a state. Many of the state's movers and shakers, including most of those on the state board of education, were Idaho graduates.

Idaho didn't want to move up, and it didn't want upstart Boise State to move up, either.

When Keiser presented a proposal that was already in the works with the Big West, the state board was not happy. Keiser was told to shelve the plan; a few months later, he was fired for not keeping the board informed of his decisions.

"There was a big brouhaha,” said Keiser, who later moved on to Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State), and moved back to Boise after his retirement earlier this year. "But I knew it was big enough that when (the proposal to move up to I-A) came around again, it would happen.”

It did.

In 1994, the Broncos finished as national runners-up in Division I-AA, losing to Youngstown State (and current Ohio State coach Jim Tressel) in the championship game. Along the way, they beat Idaho, snapping a 12-game losing streak.

Two years later, the Broncos made their I-A debut, as part of the Big West (Idaho moved up with them). At least at first, the transition wasn't easy. With coach Pokey Allen dying of cancer, Boise State went 2-10 in 1996.

But the Broncos skyrocketed from there. Under Houston Nutt, Dirk Koetter, Dan Hawkins and now Chris Petersen, the Broncos became a mid-major power. They've left the Big West behind, and won five straight WAC championships.

In the last eight seasons, no school has a better winning percentage. And the success has been matched on the books. In 1991, Boise State's athletic department budget was $4.3 million. This year, the football budget is $3.4 million; the athletic budget has jumped to $18 million.

And yet, even with that increase, the gap between Boise State and the biggest boys remains large, at least off the field. OU's 2006 football budget is $13.8 million; the overall athletics budget is $64.3 million. Thus, the excitement over Boise State's estimated $3.5 million windfall, after all the revenue is divided with the WAC, from playing in the Fiesta Bowl.

The Broncos practice in a $9.5 million indoor facility. Next spring, the school will break ground on a $35 million stadium expansion project that will include luxury suites and club seating; according to Bleymaier, the athletic director, 75 percent of the suites have been sold.

But it's more than money. Although the BCS berth is easily the program's biggest accomplishment, Boise State boosters are convinced the building project has just begun.

Can Boise State build something bigger and better, even? No one's really sure. But anyone who knows the program's history isn't about to set limits.

"If you had told me 10 years ago, ‘Milford, we're gonna get a BCS (bowl) bid,'” said Terrell, the state board of education member and a longtime booster, " I'd have said, 'What are you smoking?'”

Suddenly, nothing seems like a pipe dream.

"If everybody has their way … we're gonna go as high as it's possible to go in I-A football,” Terrell said. "We're the new kids that are gonna try and make a mark in this big nation. We'll be on the map.”

If so, the rest of us might be about to discover what a few have long known.

"Boise has always been a football town,” said Hawkins, now Colorado's head coach. "They were great as a junior college and great as a I-AA program. And it's just kept going.”

And growing.

"It's been such a remarkable rise,” Smith said. "It's almost unbelievable.”