Givin' a little love to the Broncos...

While we cover football on a national international level here at Following Football, we're really just a very small contingent based in Idaho, USA - and when you talk football in Idaho, you have to start with the Little Engine that Could, the Boise State Broncos college football team. From its roots as Boise Junior College in the 30s through the early 60s, through the BSC years in Division II, and then as a university moving into what was then called "Division 1-AA" (where they won a national title in 1980), and finally moving up into Division 1A in the lowly Big West, then to the WAC, and finally (so far) into the Mountain West conference...Boise State's football program has been amazingly and consistently successful at every level. 

For most non-potato-bred fans, their familiarity with the Boys on the Blue starts with arguably the Best College Football game of the Century (at least it's in the conversation) - the 43-42 "upset" of Oklahoma in their first Fiesta Bowl appearance on New Year's Day, 2007. (We say "upset" because most folks fail to remember that while OU was a huge betting favorite, Boise was undefeated and actually two spots ahead of the 10-2 Sooners in the polls.) Watch the game again - Boise actually dominated the game, controlling the line of scrimmage on offense AND defense, and led 28-10 in the third quarter, looking to put away the disgruntled Sooners with ease...when they muffed a punt return, giving OU the ball for a short field, a quick TD, and the game was on. From there, re-invigorated, Oklahoma kisked a FG to bring themselves within eight at the start of the fourth quarter, and scored a TD with less than two minutes to play, followed by the wackiest set of two-point attempts you'll ever see (they succeeded - called back on OU penalty; they failed - called back on a BSU penalty; they succeeded the third time to tie at 28-28).

Then the fun began.

Given the ball with 1:06 to go, Boise QB Jared Zabransky immediately threw a pick-six and "lost" the game, 35-28. The narrative became, "The plucky little team held fast against the big bad seven-time national champs all game long, but eventually it was just too much for them." And then, first-year coach Chris Petersen started in on his bag of tricks. (Until then, he'd not needed them - as I said, they'd been winning 'conventionally' all game long.) Facing fourth and eighteen at midfield, down to under twenty seconds to play, they called the "hook-and-ladder" play: Zabransky to Drisan James, who tossed it to Jerard Rabb running full speed the other way and barely made it into the corner of the end zone for the tying TD.

Still not over. Tie game: Overtime.

Oklahoma's Adrian Peterson (great college running back - wonder whatever happened to him?) sliced through the exhausted Bronco defense like warm butter. Uh-0h, thought coach Petersen. We can't keep going like this. So when the Broncos scored their touchdown (on a halfback pass on fourth down, of course...), Petersen went for two and the chance to win or lose right there. One play, for the Fiesta Bowl championship.

The Statue of Liberty.

Famously, receiver Legadu Naanee, standing on the sideline when the play was called, immediately said, "We just won the game." The combination of the audacity of the call, as Pat Forde puts it, and the upset victory itself drove the stadium (and the country) into pandemonium...ratcheted up one more notch a few minutes later when, during an interview on national TV following his game winning two-point scamper, running back Ian Johnson proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend and shocked the poor interviewer. I love Johnson's casual explanation for the timing: "There's no better time than on national TV after the game-winning two-point conversion."

After that game, the Bronco legend took on steam. They went 12-1 and 11-1 in back to back seasons without returning to the BCS (but while watching Hawaii go and fail completely), until they returned in 2010, as the first team to "earn" a berth from an 'inferior' conference (rather than get the automatic non-power conference bid for being top 12)...only to play the OTHER non-power conference team, TCU (at the time, still a Mountain West member, while BSU played in the WAC), and win 17-10. 

As you'll read in this article from long-time ESPN Bronco writer Andrea Anderson, that Fiesta Bowl legacy is what drew many of the current players to Boise State. It's a heritage that they're eager to live up to. Personally, although Arizona will be higher ranked and essentially playing at home, although this 11-2 Bronco team objectively isn't as good as the previous BCS teams they've sent, I won't bet against the Boys from the Blue. The Wildcats probably don't realize what this game means to Boise St. They'll think of it as a home game.

A home-away-from-home game.