US Weekly has nothing on us here at The Quad, where we can land celebrity interviews with the best of them. In this week’s edition of the Q&A, we sat down with college football’s most popular couple, Ian and Chrissy Johnson.

As you likely recall, Ian capped Boise State’s thrilling Fiesta Bowl victory last year by getting on bended knee and proposing to Chrissy. Suddenly, an epic game had a transcendent pop culture hook that thrust Ian and Chrissy into the American mainstream. In a whirlwind, they found themselves on “Good Morning America” and getting recognized by Paris Hilton and Peyton Manning.

They got hitched in July, but needed six police officers in attendance because of a barrage of racist threats from people who were against their mixed-race marriage. The wedding went perfectly, though, and the two are happily living in Boise. Ian is having a strong junior year for the underrated Broncos and Chrissy is working full time, as Ian jokingly refers to her as his Sugar Mama.

Here’s a wide ranging interview that covers meth labs, corn snakes, Keith Urban, Dance Dance Revolution, blue license plates, plumbing, monkeys, Appalachian State, pedicures, kids, autograph seekers, drinking, mortgages, agents, “biffing”, racism, prairie dogs, football, metrosexuals, Chelsea soccer and, of course, lightning striking on the night that Ian and Chrissy met.





Tell me a bit about your animal obsession.

Ian: I got another cat as an end-of-two-a-days present from her. We have two. Their names are Biff and Bella. Biff is from the movie “Back to the Future.”

Chrissy: Biff is part from the movie and part because when we got him he was the clumsiest cat ever. Everywhere he went he would fall.

I: He biffs it all of the time. It’s a phrase that I learned when I got to Boise. Biff it means fall. Biff is the old one and Bella is the new one. I’m really into animals, so anything she’ll let me get, I’m taking. When I first got to Boise State I had four snakes. My freshman year I went through four. I had a bull snake. It mimics a rattlesnake. It’s got a little tail that shakes and hisses at you. They’re mean. I had two corn snakes. Those ones are so nice. Then I had a python. They were all nice guys. Then I moved in with one of the football players, Bush Hamdan, and I had the snakes. For a while, I moved in with these snakes. Bush was like, ‘I.J., you can move in, but no snakes.’ I was like, ‘O.K.,’ and I hid them in my closet for a long time. Everyone thought this was a funny joke. There were five guys living in the house and we were all playing around with these snakes, except when Bush was around. I finally got someone to come buy them, and he showed up when I wasn’t there. He said, ‘Hey, Bush, what’s up, I’m coming to get the snakes.’ Bush was like, ‘What snakes? What snakes? There’s no snakes here.’ He runs to my closet and sees these snakes. He freaks out, calling me, ‘You never told me there were snakes here.’

Chrissy, where are you from?

C: I’m from New Jersey. A little place called Pompton Plains, near Wayne. Right by the Giants Stadium area. In the past year we’ve seen my family three times. In the past eight years I’d only seen them twice. My dad’s job brought me out here. I grew up in New Jersey through fourth grade. My parents lived there their entire 35, 36 years. We would go back each summer and a lot of my relatives still live there. Every summer, we’d spend two weeks at the shore. I have a lot of Springsteen on my iPod. My dad worked for Hewlett Packard. We had a choice between Georgia and Boise and my dad chose Boise.

I: Wise choice. I went to Georgia once and it wasn’t a good experience. (Everyone laughs, acknowledging the Broncos’ 48-13 loss to open the season there two years ago.) That was a very nice game for my very first college football game ever.

How did you guys meet?

C: Hawaii.

I: I’ll tell the story. So we’re in Hawaii and we had never really met before. We’d crossed paths. But it was one of those things where you just see people. The whole entire time at the game, my family was there so I never went out with my friends. She hung out with some of my friends. The last night after the game, we’re released until we have to be on the plane. I finally go out. None of us were 21, so we were walking around Honolulu. We’re just walking around and the first thing we do is see some girls across the way. I didn’t know that we were meeting up with them. But I saw her and was like, ‘Wow.’ I thought, ‘It’d be super to hang out with them.’ The next thing I know, we’re all getting introduced to each other and hanging out. It was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’ Then we split off. Some guys started walking off. Me and Dave Shields, who was my roommate at the time, were walking behind them and singing some country, Keith Urban. It was a break-up song. Me and Dave were singing as loud as we could. It’s just some sad song. She was just so surprised to see two black guys singing country music at the top of their lungs in Honolulu. So, eventually we ended up just mingling together and talking. She and I started talking. We just jelled and we were goofing around the entire night.

C: We were walking down the street and we looked around and all of a sudden, all of our friends were gone.

I: I guess it’s just us now.

C: Then we went to Game World and played Dance Dance Revolution. Well, he did it and I just watched.

I: D.D.R. I used to have the pads at my house so I showed off my skills. Then we ended up swimming on the beach at like 3 a.m.

C: We met back up with everyone and all went down to the beach. It was awesome. There was a strike of lightning off in the distance. It was the best setting ever to meet the one that I was going to marry.

I: After that night we kind went our separate ways. I wanted to, but I never asked for her number. I kind of just figured, I just met a great person, but I’m never going to see her again.

C: That’s exactly what I thought. My friends said, ‘He’s a football player, forget about it.’

I: We ran into each other the next morning and just kind of caught each other staring the entire time.

C: It was so awkward. Then he chucked a pillow behind him. I was a couple of rows behind him on the plane. He was getting a little restless.

I: I threw it at her on purpose. When we got back to Boise, she tried to find me. One of the things that I told her was that my cousin worked at Hollister. It’s a store at the mall, kind of like Abercrombie. She actually goes looking for my cousin and can’t find him.

C: Its turns out he hasn’t worked there for like a year.

I: The next thing that you know, Dave has birthday party. He lives with us. When you open the door to my bedroom, there’s a bathroom door. I literally open the door to my bedroom and she opens the bathroom door. I said, ‘Hey, whoa, where did you come from.’

C: I ran up to him and gave him the biggest hug and said, ‘I’ve been trying to find you.’

I: It was like two weeks after we met. That night, we just hung out the whole entire night. We just talked until 4 a.m.

C: We sat on the couch and made fun of the people drinking because we don’t drink.

Neither of you drink?

I: I’m 20, so it would be illegal, so that’s a big part of it. She was raised not to and a lot of her friends don’t.

How seriously did you guys take the racial threats you received before your wedding this summer?



I: We were probably in the dark about them for a good month or a month in a half. They weren’t coming to us become I’m unlisted.

C: My last name was Popadics, we’re the only people in Idaho with that name.

I: Her parents were getting them only. My parents are unlisted. So people looked up her parents. They found them and were sending them a lot of letter. There was a number of things. One person sent five letters.

C: My mom was so angry, she was burning them. She’d never experienced anything like that before.

I: It’s extremely sad. It was worse because I brought them into the situation because the way I did my proposal. They were so distraught, they ended up getting caller ID. They’d get these calls that would say, ‘Are you so-and-so,’ and then they would just start yelling at them. They’d say, ‘I can’t believe that you’d support this and what kind of father are you.’ They’d get mail. It was from all across the country. Once people started figuring out what we were using for our venues. We were going to use the art museum for our venue. We were going to have a certain number of police officers at the art museum and a bomb dog come in and sniff it. The threats that they received were so significant that they requested that we do that or else they weren’t going to allow us to have our wedding there. So we had to spend a couple thousand dollars on security. We had to pay the police officers overtime rates and the dog alone was going to cost $150 for 30 minutes of work. You have to pay for the dog and the guy. It was so ridiculous. I had to sit down and actually do an escape plan for my wedding, if something was to go wrong.

C: You didn’t tell me that.

I: I didn’t want to scare you. That was when it became real. They asked, ‘Which would you rather prefer, would you prefer us making a circle around you and getting you to the limo and following you out with police cars or would you prefer us running you to the clubhouse and then barricade two doors between you and having us stand at the only entrance and line up six police officers at the only entrance?’

C: I had no idea about any of this until right now.

I: We even opened up an F.B.I. case. What we do now, anything we get we forward on to them unopened. They even found one of the guys. They charged him with harassment and gave him a couple thousand dollar fine.

C: The date of the wedding got out. We had news people at our wedding at 6 a.m. setting up. We got married in a big cathedral downtown and the country club was in Eagle, about 30 minutes away. The country club was really private. We invited family only to that. The news found out about it by 10 p.m. and showed up. We were in the middle of dancing and didn’t want them in. It was a circus. They were interviewing people outside the church. There was a guy on a bike with no shirt on taking pictures on his cellphone camera.

I: We took enough precaution to where we were set up. There were only two entrances to the country club. When you came in, you couldn’t help know that there was police presence there. If someone was going to do something, they were going to get caught. We had two police officers shadowing us at all times, unmarked.

How many police total?

C: There were only two.

I: No. Actually there were two unmarked following us. There were two in the cars at one entrance. Two in the cars at another entrance. I went over this with them. There were six total.

C: There were only two.

I: No, there were six, we didn’t want to freak you out on your wedding day.

C: Good, I was stressed out enough.

What do you think about living up here?

I: I grew up outside of Anaheim and would go to Disney Land, and I’m right near the beach. I’m definitely from around a lot of different cultures. So when I got here, the biggest thing was, wow, there’s a very vanilla culture here. You can’t go into the city and not be able to speak the same language. It’s not just Spanish. There’s Korean and Japanese. Here, you just came in and everyone was just so nice. Its something else you don’t get in California. People are so nice that it’s obnoxious sometimes. People were so nice and genuine. One of the big things for my parents with me coming up to Idaho is that they didn’t know what it was going to be like. I’m mixed race, and you hear all of the stories about the Aryan Nation being from Idaho. My mom actually came up with me on my recruiting trip. She was like, ‘They’re going to show you the glitz and the glamor. They’re going to sell you. I’m want to be sold myself.’ She went out and was mingling and walking around and at the park. She was sitting down and some dude came up with his dogs and sat down next to her and started talking to her for an hour. She said that it wouldn’t happen in California. She said this was not just a good place for sports, but it’s a good place to be a good person.

C: (Appetizers had just landed on the table, including bruschetta.) Sorry to interrupt, but you may want to note that he ate tomatoes.

I: I just tried tomatoes and I don’t really eat tomatoes. She wants to make sure that everyone knows when I eat something. I’m very finicky. I like very plain stuff. I eat a hamburger with ketchup. That’s it.

Back to Boise

I: We got here and it wasn’t as small as I thought it was. As I’ve come to live here, it’s really a growing town. It has a lot of things that other cities have to offer. There’s just not a hundred of them. It really is a great place to raise a family. As I was getting more mature, I don’t think I want my kids to grow up in California. Around here, there aren’t as many negative influences. You can kind of mold your children to the life you want them to lead without so many outside influences. It’s definitely a great place. The people have been so great and the town is so supportive of the sports teams. They have that whole blue-collar thing with everything they do.

If football works out for you professionally, you’re still going to live here?

I: Yeah, even if it was like what Derek Schouman is doing. He has a condo in Buffalo where he’s playing in the N.F.L., and has his house here that he rents out. I’d keep my small house here. Well, my parents bought the house, and we’re renting it from them. We pay the mortgage.

What’s it like where you live?

I: We don’t live in the best neighborhood.

C: Yeah, there’s a couple of meth labs on our street.

I: We went out to Taco Bell one night and came home and there’s SWAT vans everywhere. There’s a SWAT van in our driveway. Dudes are running around in the black masks with huge guns. It was like, ‘What’s going on? All I wanted was to get a cheesy gordita crunch.’ The next thing you know, the guy pulls up his mask and says, ‘Hey Ian, I didn’t know that you lived here.’

C: Seriously, this all happened. Then he started asking if Ian could knit them a swat team beanie.

I: They wanted me to make Boise special SWAT beanies. They want us to making S.U.O. beanies, special unit officers. They’re not technically a SWAT team.

C: We always have really weird, random things happen to us.

How did you start plumbing?

I: DeBest, the plumbing company, is one of the few places that’s lenient with their hours. They always need someone to do the muscle work. Anytime a journeyman could do the muscle work for them, they’d do it. During the summer, every football player needs a job.

I got here and missed out my first year on being a plumber. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a plumber, that job stinks.’ And then the next thing you know, I’m working park lot security and everyone else is loving their job. You’re digging, you’re goofing off with other players, you’re throwing water on players, you’re throwing shovels of dirt, you’re playing around with your hard hat on. The next year, one of the older guys said, ‘Let’s get this job. Let’s get on it early.’ As soon as football season was over, we got on this job and I stayed there for a year and a half and worked there during the season last year. It was flexible enough with hours and I showed up there in the morning.

How many hours a week did you work during the season? You led the country in touchdowns and finished eighth in the Heisman balloting.

I: It was about 20 hours a week. It was to the point where I couldn’t be an apprentice because you needed to take the classes at night, I was actually learning the trade. I’d go out with any of the journeymen without an apprentice there. I’d take out the chop saw and start cutting pieces. I had a tape measure that I was so proud of. But it got to the point where the two jobs were getting to be too much. I got a better offer at a different job, working for an investment group.

How did you go from plumbing to investing? It doesn’t seem like a natural progression.

I: Someone I knew in the football program, I told him I needed a new job. Someone he knew was coming up to Boise to fire part of his staff. My guy told him he knew someone looking for some job experience and his major in entrepreneurial management. He told him to bring me in and see what he can do. It was about May, and I got on this job it was actually like a real job. I had an office and everything. It’s called the Trada Group. What they do is that they’re an investment, development and management group. They find investors for whatever their current project is. They develop the land. I was on the construction site and do warranty coordinating. I’d basically go in there and look at apartment complexes and go through and make sure everything covered under our warranty before they were up, the subcontractors would come in and fix. Just making sure before they close these buildings, before they become our liability, that everything is up to our standards and our investor’s standards.

Are you doing it now?

I: I’m on break from it now. During football season, I’m not going to be able to do it. They’re 100 percent O.K. with me coming back after the season. That’s actually one of my job opportunities if football goes awry. I can join in and do this as a full-time job and making really good money.

C: I was looking for a full-time job in May. They found out that my degree is going to be in marketing. They needed an additional person here at one of the properties here in Boise in property management in their marketing department. I’m working there full-time. In the spring I’m going to take classes part-time. I’m in upper-division classes and they don’t have what I need at the times that I need them. I’m not taking classes at all right now.

I: She’s taking the semester off so she can be my sugar mama, because I’m not cheap. (Laughter from both.) She wanted to be able to take care of the finances without having to worry. Five hundred and fifty dollars a months isn’t enough to get a college student by.

That’s your scholarship check?

I: Now it’s up a little bit more since we got married. It went up $100. When rent was $325 and I would eat a few hundred dollars, it would get a little thin.

I love your license plate, ILVMY41 (41 is Johnson’s jersey number).

C: Thank you.

I: My car is CIANRUN, which I got in high school. That’s actually a very big bull’s-eye when I’m driving around.

CJ: When we park it in the driveway, people know exactly where we live. Kids come and knock on the door and say, ‘Hi, um, is Ian here?”

What’s your life been like the past eight months?

I: We really got thrown on the scene last year starting with Oregon State. Until last year, I was a redshirt freshman who played a little bit. Once in a while, someone would recognize me and say, ‘You should have played more’ or something. The hard-core football fan would recognize me if they saw the 41 on my jacket. I could wear my Boise State stuff out and rarely be noticed. Now it’s to the point where I went out with a Captain Jack Sparrow wig, a hat and a hood on and a little kid came up and said, ‘I.J., why are you wearing a wig?’ Oh, man, if a 6-year-old can pick me out with all that on, there’s no getting around it. Now, people recognize her. When people go out, we expect we’ll be out an extra two or three hours. If we don’t have enough energy to give people an honest Ian and Chrissy, we just don’t go out. We don’t want to go out and be rude to anyone.

C: We were trying to celebrate our two-year anniversary the other day. We both were exhausted and we were like, ‘We can’t go out. We might as well sit home and watch TV or rent a movie.’ We love renting movies. Its not that we’re rude.

I: Every once in a while, you feel you deserve a moment to yourself and you want to be out and do it. But we know that this town has given so much to us that when they do ask anything of you, you want to give them everything. If you want an autograph while we’re eating dinner, no problem. The times that we’re not willing to do it, we don’t go out.

C: We don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression. But there was one time, when I think that I gave the dirtiest look in the world to this woman. We had bowed our heads to pray before dinner, and we were sitting there in the middle of our prayer. She was like, ‘Oh, they’re not doing anything, can you sign this for my son?’ I was like, ‘Wow, she did not just do that.’ He hates going to church because in the middle of prayers at church, people will pull on his shirt or pass a program over to be autographed. There’s a time and a place for everything. I think people get so starstruck they forget where they’re at or what they’re doing. What happened to you the other day?

I: Oh, I was on the phone with my dad and talking about our insurance. I was in the middle of an important call and someone walked up to me was like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, talk to my friend on the phone.’ I was like, ‘What?’ There’s a bunch of random stuff, and if you look at it the wrong way it can take away from the experience. But we’re real good at looking at things with a positive attitude. One of the biggest things we love about Boise State is how much they love their team. That love doesn’t die when the fourth quarter ends. That loves continues Monday through Friday while they’re waiting for the game.

C: When we got back from the ESPN awards, I had a totally different perspective of when people come up to us. I’m a huge Hilary Duff fan. I saw her and I was like, ‘This is my only chance, I’ve got to go up and say hi to her.’ I was so shy, but I went up and got a picture with her. She was so, so sweet. And I got a totally different perspective of it because she deals with this stuff all the time.

Did any celebrities recognize you guys?

C: I think Paris Hilton figured out who we were.

I: It was really cool. That was one of the biggest things for us. We realized we can always give a positive attitude no matter what we’re going through because we met so many people. There were a lot of people at the ESPY awards that were a little rude. We’re not going to name anyone, but they had a rep and that just confirmed it. But there were so many people there who had no reason to give two seconds to us and were so nice.

C: Like The Rock.

I: There were so many people that were amazing. Peyton Manning was amazing. Danica Patrick sat there and talked to us for like 45 minutes. Tony Dungy was amazing. That whole Colts team was great.

C: I did not want to go home. I was in heaven.

I: The big thing for me was the next week. I’m a huge soccer fan. We went down to see Chelsea play against the L.A. Galaxy. And we had a little bit of a relationship going on between me and their striker, Didier Drogba. We had done a Sports Illustrated article together and he had us come down after the game. We went out there and met him and he gave me a jersey with my own name on it. He was truly genuine to us. This guy has a relationship with me. Their captain, John Terry, he’s the captain of the English team, has no ties to me whatsoever. He came up to me and all my buddies and start talking to us and invites us to the locker room after the game the next day. It was like, O.K., it’s beyond you to come and talk to us. Now you’re inviting us down to the locker room. After the game, the lady who was mediating the whole thing told us that we could only bring one person down, and that was me. I so was going to bring stuff for all my friends to get signed. I’m down there and John Terry comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, where are all of your friends?’ He’s sitting there in just shorts, no socks, no shirt and runs out. He said, ‘Call them on the phone, we’re going to get them all down here right now.’ I’m calling all my buddies, there’s seven of us, two were in the bathroom and missed out. He’s picking five guys out of this huge crowd of thousands and he’s just like, ‘This is John Terry, captain of the English football team, you will let these guys down.’ He got all my buddies down onto the field. It was so amazing that someone not only from a different country, but that I have no ties to, would be so genuinely nice to someone that they don’t know. It was like, wow, the next time that anyone asks for anything I’m going that extra mile. I want to make sure that they felt the way that I feel right now.

Have there ever been twinges of regret that with everything being so public?

I: No, never. There are things and responsibilities that come with what you want. If you’re so lucky to have people be of fan of you or to have your jersey in the shop. What small price is there? Am I willing to be interrupted in the middle of a meal? Yes. I never regretted this being so public and televised.

C: I think it puts him and I in a good place being a role model. We’re of a young age. We don’t go out and party and don’t do that sort of thing. I think that we’re a good role model for children and even adults, too. It always helps a little bit when you want to do something bad. It’s like, ‘Hey, people are watching.’

I: It’s like, I’m going to spit on the sidewalk … uh, no. It really did help mold us. If I was just a regular college football player, who knows what I’d be doing right now. I’d be hanging out with all my buddies, trying to sneak into bars. Instead we’re thrown into this at the perfect time. Instead, I’m exactly what I wanted to be growing up personality-wise with my morals and everything. I also happen to have some glitz and glamour and have gotten to do things. If someone said, ‘You get to go to the ESPYs, but every other day you have to be bothered my someone.’ I’ll trade it. But it’s so much more than that.

When did you first realize things were different?

I: We got off the plane in New York. People were like, ‘Boise State.’ We’d walk through airports and see our face on USA Today and we were like, ‘What’s going on?’ We went home for spring break and went to San Diego, which was two hours from where I live. We were wearing regular street clothes and there’s people coming out of their shops saying, ‘Hey, Boise State.’ I have a somewhat common face in a crowd. There’s nothing real distinct about me. It was gloomy outside. I don’t wear Boise State attire because I try and not draw attention to myself. It was so crazy. It was three months after it happened and people were still picking us out. It was like, ‘Wow, this is really different. Its not just Idaho.’ We say that Bronco nation is growing. It really has grown.

C: My family in New Jersey say that they wear their Boise State stuff all the time and have people coming up to them. My little cousin’s optimist football team are all Boise State fans now.

How are things different on the field now?

I: That Cinderella period is over. And I mean last year was a great year for us. Even though we did everything in our power to make sure we didn’t ride on last year, I mean, you couldn’t help but say, we worked hard and did all this stuff. We could not help but think that someone would step up and do what happened last year. Someone is going to step up and be that fire. We may even have better talent. It was like, ‘Bam,’ Washington happened. Now we’re back in it. Now we’ve got to realize that what was four years in the making last year, we’ve got to be the hungry ones. No one is going to give it to us. We’ve got to earn what we get. No one is giving us anything. We’ve always liked being in that position. We love going into hostile environments, with people saying we don’t deserve to be there.

What did you think about Appalachian State?

I: I just loved seeing guys put it together. You can honestly just go in there and say, ‘This is Michigan, we have every right to lose. Let’s go out and play a quarter and say that I tackled Mike Hart.’ They put it together and got it in their heads and said, ‘Let’s see what we can do.’ The talent level isn’t that different anymore between the top teams and what you would consider mid-majors and Division I-AA or whatever they call it now. Now teams realize that there’s just as good talent across the board. It comes down to making it happen, eliminating mistakes and controlling the ball and not turning it over and making plays when they have a chance. There’s great players all over place. That’s one of the things that Boise State has always been about. We’re not going to get a guy who is a great player and 6-foot-7. We’re going to get a guy who is 6-foot-2 who plays like he’s 6-foot-7. And you get a few of those together and they realize their potential and all of a sudden, size is just size. It really comes down to making guys believe. Just being bigger isn’t enough anymore. You have to be better at what you do. You can beat a big guy with speed and angles. You can beat a fast guy by making him over pursue.

When someone brought up the N.F.L. draft to you in the locker room at the Fiesta Bowl you laughed and said no one had talked to you about it. Do you plan on being here the next two years.

I: The way I look at it is right now, no one has talked to me. My goal is to stay here, get a degree and be able to provide for my family. If there’s a better deal that comes across. If someone says, ‘Hey, you are a first-day-of-the-draft-type guy and you can sign a contract without bouncing around.’ My decision isn’t going to be that I’m going to leave early and try and make a practice squad and bounce around. Because now I’m thinking for two. The last thing I’m going to do is leave for a dream. Whatever I have to do, it has to be for sure. Even if it’s next year, if someone says I have to work out for six months to try and get one for an unsigned free agent, that’s not for me. I love football, but I made a commitment to take care of my family.

C: Hey, I’m all for moving around. I’m totally laid back. I’ll do anything.

I: I want to start a family and I want to have kids. When you’re trying to make a practice squad, there’s so much uncertainty in that. If you sign a contract, O.K., that’s great. You can sit down and use your money to get a little house. Without a certain level of certainty, I could be here two more years and be done with football. That’s fine because my goal growing up in life wasn’t that I wanted to be an N.F.L. player. I never thought that I’d make it to college and I never thought that I’d make it to the pros. I don’t base my life on if I’m going to do that, that’s not my success/failure. My success/failure is if I’m a good husband, and whether or not I can provide for my family. My goal growing up was to have a white picket fence, a monkey and a wife and kids. Not necessarily in that order. I have to make the best decision for what happens with my family. If I can sign a million-dollar contract, a million dollars is a lot of money and that’s not something that you can just pass up. Now, if that doesn’t happen, O.K., let’s play another year. I’m in no hurry to go anywhere. I want to be settled and say, ‘Chris, we can start having kids in two years.’ Whatever I do , I want to be stable. I admire the guys that will sit there and beat at it three years on a practice squad and finally make that team. Those three years for me, on and off teams, moving from Washington to Tampa Bay. I don’t know if I could do it, on practice squads and camp-to-camp pay. There’s other things in the world I want more. I’m not going to sacrifice the security I have with her.

C: Whatever you do, you know I’ll be there.

I: I just told what my dreams are.

C: As long as in the long run I get my kids, I’ll be happy.

About agents. I remember Alex Smith telling me that after he had a big game the first week of his junior year a guy who looked like a used car salesman knocked on his door of his house and wanted to be his agent. You haven’t had any contact with agents?

I: The guy in Boise who signs all the guys who try and go as free agents has talked to me. But they are really like local sales guys.

Drew Rosenhaus hasn’t called you yet?

I: I don’t even know who that is. That’s probably bad.

You seem at peace with your limitations, football-wise.

I: I definitely know what I’m good at, and what I can and can’t do. You can always get a little bit faster and a little bit stronger. I’m 5-10 and 198 pounds. I can go up to 215. I run what I run. I’ve run 4.4s. My freshman year I ran a 4.43. There’s a number of guys when we line up and race, they’ll beat me. But I know that when we put on pads, I know what I can do on the field. Numbers aren’t always it for me.

Have you had to learn to run differently this year?

I: One of the things last year we were able to do. I knew exactly what we had. We had an amazing tight end who was basically a sixth offensive lineman. He could line up against a 300-pound defensive end and basically stalemate him. Now that he’s gone, and we’re going to get the eight and nine-man box. We need to learn how to play the edge. Even though we run between the tackles so much, that edge block dictates where I’m going. Now that we kind of understand how it’s going to be and how it’s not going to be sometimes. And I definitely had to change from a straight-up seven-man box and we’re going to have these kinds of numbers, so I can wait for my blocks. Now there’s two extra guys in there, if you wait for them they’re going to come get you. There’s only so many people to block. We may be out the window with this whole being patient and waiting for blocks. No one thinks we can throw. When I get tackled, guys say, ‘You are never going to run on us. That is our one thing. Go for the deep ball.’ Guys will tell you that. They’ll be laying on top of me and say, ‘I don’t care what happens, you’re not going to get another yard.’ Southern Miss said that. Washington, the first thing they said was, ‘You’re not going to get 50 yards rushing.’ It’s definitely a different world out there this year. We don’t have that supporting cast that everyone remembers from last year. We rode into the year with these wide receivers who could burn you on routes and then discovered we had a running back. Who knew? Now we’ve got the running back and those wide receivers are gone. We’ve got some good guys and some good recruits. But they haven’t seen anything, nothing that will make you sit and play four guys back. They’re still going to drop the safety down a bit and have our corners play inside-out and they’re reading run.

How much have you seen city and program evolve in four years?

I: The city itself, aside from football, it has grown so much. When I was plumbing, we were always building new construction. Just from that point, wow. We went from just having a mall to now there’s just so many other things here. To see the school itself, two additional parking structures, the indoor facility, we’ve got the stadium expansion going on right now. We’ve got two new dorms. We’ve got a new interactive learning center on campus. We’ve got an engineering program. When we got here, we wanted to be a metropolitan university of distinction. And its happening. There’s so much going on with the team, big-time businesses like HP and Ore-Ida. There’s so many things going on. This team is growing at almost the same rate as the city is growing.

C: My mom teaches at Boise State and says there’s so many students coming in from all over the place. She asks what they’re doing here and a lot of them say the football team attracted them to it. Then they found out what a great school that Boise State is. He would never say it, but the football team is seriously growing that school. And the other athletics, too.

I: We should have blue license plates. That would be great. I’ll talk to the governor, Butch Otter. He’d probably do it. He’s that kind of a guy.

C: Instead of “Famous Potatoes” it should say, “Famous Blue Turf.” (Everyone laughs).

Have things gotten back to normal for you guys?

I: I wouldn’t say that it’s back to normal. I would say that this is our new normal. Its’ definitely died down a little bit from everyone being all about the Fiesta Bowl. It’s still been very much the same since the Fiesta Bowl. If we go out to anywhere; this is an upscale restaurant, so people aren’t going to mess with us. But if we still go out and people will pull up next to us. You’ll go somewhere and people will be following you around. You’ll sit at a McDonald’s and people will be doing the prairie dog thing. (Johnson hunches down in his seat and then pops up and opens his eyes wide. He repeats the motion a few times, looking like, well, a prairie dog.) People still think that we’re deaf, dumb and blind. They’ll be sitting right next to me and say, ‘Hey, you’re Ian Johnson.’ It’s like, ‘I can hear you.’

C: Our new thing to say to each other is, ‘Yes, we’re deaf.’

Coach Petersen told me today that he knew you were different from the day you walked on campus. When I asked why, he said he could tell by what you were wearing. Do you remember what you were wearing?

I: I’m from California and I’m from a suburban area and I’m a beach guy. So I had the tight jeans, I actually had a pedicure. I was wearing sandals, even though it was cold. I had a blue muscle t-shirt with a blue apple cap on. I was matching 100 percent. I definitely had a style that no one had seen in Idaho. I think we might see it in a couple of years when things finally catch up.

What’s an apple cap?

I: You’ll see guys with a lot of hair wearing them. Its like a beanie with a brim on it. I had a lot of hair. It wasn’t an afro because I relaxed it. I had these huge curls. It was kind of bushy. I could spike it. It was that curly, but almost straight. If you want to say it was bushy, it was. It was a real California look. I came in with a air of confidence with what I was wearing. The typical guy that comes in here from California is a second-chance guy or a guy from inner-city L.A. or Sacramento area. I’m from the suburbs. There was the word metrosexual thrown around a lot. Then, I’d get bored in meetings and I started to crochet. Then guys were like, ‘You’re not metro, you might be a little iffy.’ They definitely thought that I was weird. I ate nine bananas a day in meetings to stay awake during two-a-days in the summer. Those things added up to me being a different – quote, unquote – kind of person. I didn’t listen to rap music. Everyone else listens to rap music. From my area, we listen to local-band-type guys. I listen to hard-core punk music. Stuff with screaming. These guys were not having it. Everything I did, these guys were just laying into me. I’m a big video game nerd. I just had a lot going.

How do you remember that well what you were wearing?

I: Its not that I’ll remember. A lot of times when we get a new coach or a new person, they’ll be like, ‘Ian, you’re a little weird.’ And someone will say, ‘Well, you should have seen him the first day that he was here.’ It’s gotten so out-of-hand that I wasn’t wearing a blue shirt anymore, I was wearing a fishnet shirt with my hair slicked back and my nails painted with French tips. It’s like, ‘Wow, how far can this story go.’

With your career at Boise State, you’ve already written a good story. But for you, there’s still a lot of golf left to play. What do you hope your ultimate legacy is here?

I: My ultimate legacy here, I want to say that I ended whatever happened on a positive note. Whatever I do in the end. Whether it’s to end or do whatever and do it and not just save face, but end with a positive attitude and continue on to something better. Not just float around. I don’t want be that guy who is doing commercials for Larry Miller Honda or whatever. I want to be a guy who played here and then made a decision to move on and live the rest of his life with his wife or do something great at the next level. Then that legacy ends and my next legacy begins with me as a father and a husband.

When you picked Boise, who did it come down to?

I: The sad part is, I had no other offers. That’s another part of my story, you could say. In high school, I went to a big school that was a college prep school, but we didn’t send a lot of guys to the next level for football. We were in that area where U.S.C. and U.C.L.A. wouldn’t go that far. Not a lot of teams go into California looking. I was All-C.I.F., I put up decent numbers. My senior year, I found out that during my junior year my coach had actually blackballed me. When teams would come, he’d tell coaches, ‘Nah, he’s a nutcase.’ I had a 3.5 GPA and I’ve never had any suspensions or been in any trouble. He ended up blackballing me when coaches would come. He’s say, ‘Nah, he’s a nutcase, but look at this wide receiver.’ That coach ended up being fired. When they cleaned out his office, there was a box of letters requesting game tape and film or asking if I’d come to this camp. By the time I got to respond to them, it was my senior year and I called teams and they said they were told that I wasn’t interested. They already had the list of guys they were looking at. I had letters from Ivy Leagues to a number of Pac-10 schools, Washington and U.C.L.A.

Is this something that’s been written?

I: It’s been written locally. It’s something that I don’t harbor any anger about. Whatever his anger was, it got me to where I am now. The path I’ve taken has molded me to where I am now and to a life that I’m not complaining about. So, for me to sit there and tell you about this guy who was a jerk to me back in high school, that would be rude. My senior year, my coach came in and was commuting from Northern California. He said he’d give us all the resources we needed to get recruited, but couldn’t do it personally because he was moving his family down from California. So it was me sitting there with two VCRs recording my own stuff and it ended up being a very poor-at-best highlight film. It was me and my mom personally calling teams, asking if they wanted to take a look at me. I had given up and was going to go J.C. And Boise was recruiting a guy from Rancho Cucamonga, Patrick Chung. They were recruiting him at safety. They showed his film and said, ‘Who is this running back that you’re playing against.’ He said, ‘That’s Ian Johnson from Damien.’ They said, ‘Is it worth me going down there and looking at him?’ He had all the power in the world to say, ‘Nah.’ But he was like, ‘He’s definitely worth your time. He gave us tons of problems.’ So they came and said they loved the film and asked for another one. Within two weeks they’d offered me an official visit and the day before I left on my visit they’d offered me a full ride. Within three days I figured out that not only could I come here, but I could be happy here even if I wasn’t playing football. And it was a sold deal.