The two most memorable things to have ever happened at Albertsons Stadium weren't football plays. The first is when Boise State University installed blue turf in 1986. The second came in the moments following the first game of 2009.

On the evening of September 3, BSU took down Oregon, 19-8. The Ducks had won 10 games and gone to the Rose Bowl the year before. Over two years, they had averaged nearly 40 points per game. They managed just eight points and 31 rushing yards against the Broncos.

As the players exited the field, BSU defensive tackle Byron Hout said something smack-like to Oregon's star running back LaGarrette Blount. Blount socked him in the jaw.

Blount was suspended for 10 games, and after all the promise of 2008 — he rushed for 1,000 yards as a backup and was considered a surefire breakout star — his final season finished with 22 carries and 82 yards.

There was no excuse for the punch, but when he lost his social bearings, he was just as confused as the rest of us. How could this have happened?

How could this team of two-stars and former walk-ons have physically dominated a team with title aspirations?

How could this program in the middle of football nowhere keep getting better?

The win was Boise's 13th in 14 games. It was the first in a 24-game winning streak. Chris Petersen's Broncos had enjoyed their mid-major moment in the sun, beating OU via trick-play barrage in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. But they kept growing.

They finished 14-0 in 2009, concluding with a defeat of fellow unbeaten TCU, 17-10, for their second Fiesta Bowl title. They would take down eventual ACC champion Virginia Tech and go 12-1 in 2010. They would dominate eventual SEC East champion Georgia in Atlanta and go 12-1 in 2011. In 2014, they’d win their third Fiesta Bowl.

Over the last 18 seasons, Boise State has averaged nearly 11 wins and has won fewer than 10 games only four times. And over the last 11 years, Boise State has ranked in the S&P+ top 20 five times. Only 14 FBS programs can top that; most are bluebloods, and all have far more history and revenue.

I am asked often about Moneyball in college football. Usually, that refers to advanced stats’ proliferation within the sport.

But the term came from Michael Lewis' book about the Oakland A's and their attempts to exploit inefficiencies and win big without big money.

By that definition, college football's Moneyball story already exists. This summer, I went to Boise to hear it.

Jeff Pitman, Boise State strength coach and former BSU starting center (1991-92):

I watched the [1980 I-AA semifinal] game against Grambling here as a kid with my granddad, and I was hooked. That was the hook for me, probably the most incredible game I've ever seen here. When Grambling walked out, I was like, there's no way these guys are beating Grambling, just on the size. But that spirit — those guys fought tooth and nail, and they were always one step ahead. From the players to the coaches to the administrators to the boosters and those type of people, there was a sense that Boise was going to explode, population-wise, and that this program was gonna launch. Just keep grinding, keep pulling the rope, whatever you want to say, and each class of players that came in, the previous classes before them instilled that in them. To me it's a spirit, in a sense, that Boise was always a program that would fly under the radar nationally, but in the Boise area, there was a very strong group of fans and boosters that really were, through thick and thin, connected to Boise State.

Andy Avalos, BSU defensive coordinator and former BSU linebacker (2001-04):

There was just that feeling when you come here, and you get around the program and the city, that there was something special about to happen here.

The first thing you notice about Boise, Idaho, is that it is tight.

For starters, everything you need from the city is in about a three-mile by three-mile space in near downtown. That’s enough space to hold BSU, a zoo, a state capitol, corporate offices for Microsoft, Oracle, H-P, etc., and a swath of restaurants and breweries. It is extremely walkable, which is a great thing for the eight or so months of the year when you can go outside.

It’s also tight in that people from Boise love being from Boise. This is a community that believes itself a hidden gem. It’s not hard to see what they see. And if you happen to be a successful Boise State player, you return.

You don’t lose, and you don’t leave. Call that the Boise State mantra.

Boise indeed exploded, from 102,249 within the city in the 1980 Census to 205,671 in 2010. The metropolitan area now boasts more than 600,000.

But simply having bodies doesn’t create a good football program.

Chapter 1: Find smart people

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Let’s fast-forward to the end of my trip. By that point, I’d spoken with former Boise State stars and/or current coaches (and the Venn Diagram has quite a bit of overlap).

My goal was to wear every hat I have, so to speak. I wanted personal stories, examples of inefficiencies exploited, and unique strategies and tactics. I had gotten plenty of the first two and virtually none of the last.

To be sure, there were examples of fourth-down philosophies more liberal than the norm. But I was looking for a little more than that.

The most detailed answer I had gotten came from head coach Bryan Harsin, a former BSU backup quarterback and offensive coordinator: "I think we had kind of our own style," he said. "There were some things with some movement." The Broncos were deadly in using motion to read defenses and take advantage of matchup advantages when Kellen Moore was quarterback from 2008-11, but it has long been part of the philosophy.

From there, Harsin caught himself.

"But I don't think it was all that. It was Dan [Hawkins] being very detailed, Chris [Petersen] being in the same frame of mind. We had coordinators who were very anal and detailed and precise about how things needed to be done, and we had a head coach that was along those same lines."

I had gotten almost that same answer from everybody. This didn’t feel like a "We don’t want to reveal our secrets" thing; it was more "I don’t think this was one of our secrets."

At some point, I accepted it: it wasn’t about the tactics. It was about everything else.

Jared Zabransky, former BSU quarterback (2003-06):

We had guys that were probably smarter than the guys across the ball from us, and that way our coaches could implement game plans that were highly intellectual that could beat other game plans that had to be dumbed down.

Bart Hendricks, BSU athletic department director of development and former BSU quarterback (1997-2000):

Once they were confident enough in me, and I knew what was going on, they could expand on a lot more things, maybe find situations they could exploit vs. making it pretty vanilla. It got to a point where we were capable of exploiting weaknesses from a talent perspective and a knowledge perspective. That's what they do in the NFL; they find the weakest person on the defense and exploit it.

Lee Marks, BSU running backs coach and former BSU running back (2003-05):

Our mindset has always been the exact same. We're pro-style, but we're very multiple in what we do. Whatever we can do to attack you and keep you off-balance is basically what we're going to do. Our mindset, even from when [former head coach] Dirk Koetter was here until now, has not changed one bit.

Nate Potter, BSU graduate assistant and former BSU offensive tackle (2008-11):

We used a lot of different players in different roles. We tried to confuse defenses. And at the end of the day we could run the ball with the best of them. We could just pound the ball and do that.

It’s one thing to be smart; it’s another to be smart on the field. That takes excellent teaching. If everybody knows their assignments, the reason for their assignments, and the technique behind it, they’re likely to execute.

Avalos:

This is crazy when you think about it, but we're talking about the VHS days; you play Fresno State one week, and then you turn your VHS tapes back in and get San Jose State for the next. If you didn't turn it back in, your coach is looking at you like, bro, we're gonna run out of these VHS at some point. I don't think we were overly complicated on defense, but the one thing is, each guy knew his assignment very well, and more importantly, what the offense was doing and how their assignments were, how we were going to attack, how we were going to create an advantage. Sometimes less is more, and that "less," you know really well. You know the ins and outs of your "less," and you know what the strengths and weaknesses are.

Harsin:

The one thing I learned [as offensive coordinator at Texas in 2011-12] is it's no different. The players are not different; they're still 18 to 22. Some guys look a little bit different, and I think the perception is you're gonna go to a more talented, rich program and just put guys in and they're gonna execute it, and there's so much talent that it's just gonna work. Precise coaching is still the most valuable thing, no matter where you are. That's what I learned. Football's football. It's not that complicated. There's 11 dudes, and you can only arrange them in only so many different ways. How you do it, the preparation, and everything that leads up to them executing, that was different.

Great, so how exactly do you recruit smart kids who can absorb your precise coaching?

Everybody looks at transcripts, so that can’t be it.

According to Harsin, there is some nuance. Having detailed football conversations throughout the recruiting process can tell you what a guy knows.

There’s also a shortcut: look for sons of coaches or others close to the profession.

Moore’s dad was an accomplished high school coach. So was Moore successor Grant Hedrick’s. Former receiver Thomas Sperbeck, who caught 224 passes from 2013-16, learned from his father, Marshall, former Sacramento State head coach. Former QB Taylor Tharp’s father was a college basketball player and Colorado athletic director. Sophomore cornerback DeAndre Pierce’s father, Antonio, played for nine seasons in the NFL. Freshman linebacker Breydon Boyd’s father, Tres, owns a popular athletic performance lab in Katy, Texas.

Look for quarterbacks, too. The school has never had a signal caller drafted but has never failed to find a productive leader.

Boise State athletics

Hendricks threw for 9,030 yards and 78 touchdowns from 1997-00.

Ryan Dinwiddie threw for 9,819 yards and 82 touchdowns from 2000-03.

Zabransky threw for 8,256 yards and 58 touchdowns from 2003-06.

Moore broke the scale, throwing for 14,667 and 142 from 2008-11.

Joe Southwick and Hedrick combined to throw for 10,440 and 72 from 2010-14.

Entering his junior season, Brett Rypien has already thrown for 6,996 and 44.

"I knew Dinwiddie was going to be good [when I graduated]," says Hendricks. He pushed me. It was like, ‘Ooh, I better not be screwing around.’"

Zabransky (Hermiston, Ore.) and Moore (Prosser, Wash.) grew up pretty close to each other.

"He was kind of a legend out there," says Zabransky, "threw like 88 touchdowns in one season."

Until Rypien, none was particularly regarded by the recruiting services. But they were smart and accurate, and as Avalos mentions, "the way those guys prepared was unbelievable. They drove us, on the defensive side. We’re thinking, ‘Wow, these guys compete everywhere from the film room to the field.’"

Chapter 2: Find projectables

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Perhaps the most staggering aspect of Boise State’s run is how much raw talent coaches have been able to bring to Boise.

The Broncos had 15 players drafted between 1960 and 1999. They’ve had 30 since. They produced four draftees after their 2006 breakthrough and Fiesta Bowl win. They produced six after the 2011 season.

Of these 30 recent draftees, 11 were linemen. It may be hard to coach speed, but it isn’t as hard to find a lanky, athletic, 240-pound high school lineman, or a nasty, 5’11 bowling ball of a defensive tackle, slap some good weight on him, and turn a no-star grayshirt into a four-star talent.

Potter:

I think one of the most underrated things about this program is the O-line tradition. I think the last five left tackles have been drafted? Something that people usually overlook when they talk about our success in that time frame was the talent that we really had, the players that they brought in. For those years [2008-11], almost the entire defense played in the NFL. I know the entire secondary, the entire D-line, the entire receiving corps, the quarterbacks, the running backs — I mean, the NFL talent is just ridiculous. That can't be overstated. A big part of that is the recipe, the formula. The coaches for a long time have known the type of players that they can get and can't get, and most of those five-star guys that are 300 pounds in high school and can move are not gonna come to Boise State. But the guys that grew up playing every sport, that are extremely athletic, that have the mentality, that are just undersized in some way, are perfect for Boise.

Korey Hall, former BSU linebacker (2003-06):

Whenever you get an athlete — the best athlete in their high school, best on paper — if they come to BSU, they have a great strength and fitness aspect, good position coaches to teach technique. I think you can put a lot of athletes in that situation and watch them grow as players. Plus, there's the knowledge of the game. We have guys in the pros who weren't necessarily the best on paper, but they figure out what their niche is and do a great job. That's the standard.

Potter:

I remember Daryn Colledge [a starting tackle from 2002-05], who played before me, who played in the NFL for a long, long time, they would always talk to me about him. Because he was 240 pounds from North Pole, Alaska, and I was at the time 240 pounds. And so they kinda planted that in my head, like, ‘if he can do it, I can do it. I'm undersized, but I have a lot of potential.’

Avalos:

Guys like Daryn Colledge were undersized. [Former defensive tackle and 2006 TFLs leader] Andrew Browning was 240. But I think you're looking for that chip on their shoulder, that toughness, the guys that wanted to work. And that's how they recruit it, especially in the trenches. You're trying to recruit length, size, athleticism, bend, change of direction, and all that. Well, what are you going to sacrifice? You're going to get short guys who can move, or you’re gonna get long guys that have all that stuff but weight.

Boise State athletics

Zabransky:

We were kind of missed by a lot of these schools. That's what the coaches were looking for: does this guy have some fire in him? And is he coachable, in that he'll buy into what we're coaching him? Andrew was talented, Darren was obviously very talented, and we have a process in place that can get these guys from Point A to Point B if they'll just buy in. And shit, we had a bunch of psychologists as coaches. They recruited a bunch of guys that turned out to be pretty good leaders, guys that would buy into the system and lay it all on the line to win football games. How tall are you, Andy?

Avalos:

5'10.

Zabransky:

The guy was an All-WAC linebacker. You don't find that unless you've got a chip on your shoulder. You carry that throughout the rest of your life. So many guys here are still wanting to prove themselves, and it'll probably be that way forever.

Potter:

For a long time, our best players were from Idaho. I don't know what it is. I mean, we still see it right now. One of our best players currently, Leighton Vander Esch, is from Small Town, Idaho [Riggins, actually]. It's something about this school, something about this state, but there's great talent here, and it usually goes untapped. But we've taken advantage of it. Every winning team has had an Idaho player that's been a key component.

Pitman:

I think you still have an excellent blend of those try-hard kids. All the coaches here that played here were that kind of a player, so that's kind of bled down from the top. Those guys that are fantastic players, the [former BSU players] I work with who are in the NFL, hell, they were the hardest workers we had here. I never once got pissed off because those guys didn't perform.

"What are you going to sacrifice? You're going to get short guys who can move, or you’re gonna get long guys that have all that stuff but weight."

One other note: eight of the 30 draftees were defensive backs.

Avalos:

We had that mentality that we were going to win in the box, we were going to stop the run, and ... looking back now, it's easy to realize that those guys in the secondary were on islands a lotttttttt and were covering a lot of really good receivers in the WAC.

With every cycle of success, BSU found it easier to hone in on the talent it needed. The school wasn’t signing top-10 classes, but a few more athletes looking Boise’s way made a difference.

Avalos:

Everyone was so excited to go into the WAC [in 2001, leaving the Big West], because those were all the schools we wanted to get recruited by! We were excited to play all these teams, and we went on a three-year run where I don't think we lost a conference game. Now, what does that do for recruiting? Well, it brings in guys like Jared Zabranksy, guys like Korey Hall. All these guys played as sophomores [in 2004]. These guys get their bearings right that next year, and then boom, '06, look at what happens.

Chapter 3: Never forget the losses

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Harsin has a look of disgust on his face, his eyes glazed over as he flashes back 20 years. The fourth-year head coach’s voice gets lower, and he shakes his head.

"It wasn’t right, and the guys that played in that game were affected by that."

He is talking about the 1996 Idaho game. The Broncos’ transition from I-AA to I-A had not gone as planned. Head coach Pokey Allen, architect of the 1994 run to the Division I-AA finals, missed 10 games during a recurrence of the cancer he had spent most of 1995 fighting. The Broncos were 1-9 when he returned.

"He probably knew something was going on," says Hendricks, who redshirted that year. "He looked totally different. It was obvious he was pretty sick."

"Pokey was in and out, doing treatment in Canada at the time," Harsin says. "Not a very good season. He came back for the New Mexico State game, and we won it in dramatic fashion, and then we finished with Idaho."

Idaho had been the steadier program, and the Vandals were finishing up a far more successful I-A debut. They were 5-5 with a narrow loss to 10-win Wyoming and a victory over nine-win Nevada. And they had an opportunity to prove a point. Did they ever.

As that Idaho archival footage cycles through the game (twice), it omits a score. It goes from Idaho having the ball up 43-6 in the third quarter to Idaho having the ball up 50-6.

It omits a 47-yard fake-punt touchdown, when the Vandals were up 37 points in the third quarter. The omission was probably not an accident.

The lead grew to 64-6 before Boise State scored garbage time touchdowns. And to add injury to insult, Vandals allegedly ran into Allen on the sideline during an Idaho onside kick attempt.

Idaho coach Chris Tormey didn’t know Allen was going to pass away a month later. There was no evil intent.

But Boise State never forgot. The rivals split the next two games, with BSU winning in Moscow and Idaho winning again in Boise, but the Vandals’ 1998 win would be their last in the series. The Broncos’ message: 45-14 in 1999, 66-24 in 2000, 45-13 in 2001, 65-7 in 2004, 70-35 in 2005, 58-14 in 2007, 45-10 in 2008, 63-25 in 2009, and 52-14 in 2010.

"That game in 1996," Harsin says, "that was not a positive thing for Boise State. That was a moment that, for a lot of us who experienced it, it’ll never change. Our feelings toward playing that program, it just won’t change."

BSU hired Murray State head coach Houston Nutt in 1997, and the results were Nutt-like, based on his later time at Arkansas and Ole Miss: get blown out by Cal State Northridge one week, nearly take down Wisconsin the next.

"Houston, he was kind of the dark horse in the hiring process," Harsin says. "Very motivational. When he talked to us, it was powerful. He could lock you in and get your buy-in in a hurry. We thought he was different, and he did a good job, and then he was gone."

BSU went 4-7 in 1997, moving past a 1-4 start to go .500 the rest of the way.

"I actually enjoyed Houston, but it could have worn off," Hendricks says with a laugh.

1997 was the last time Boise State would finish with a losing record. Nutt was the first of quite a few strong hires in a row. Under Koetter, the Broncos improved to 6-5 in 1998, then broke through with back-to-back 10-win seasons. That earned them a spot in the WAC.

After losing 10 games in their first I-A/FBS season, they would lose just 14 games from 2002-11 under Hawkins and Petersen.

Three particularly useful losses

2005: Georgia 48, Boise State 13: Four of those 14 defeats came in 2005. The Broncos were coming off of their best-yet finish (12th in the AP poll in 2004) and laid an egg, losing to three ranked teams, including a home defeat to Boston College in the MPC Computers Bowl.

The season-opening loss to Georgia was particularly humbling; it was a chance to prove their bona fides, and they got shellacked. Zabransky completed eight passes to his team and four to Georgia’s, and the Dawgs raced to a 24-0 halftime lead.

Hawkins left after the season to take the Colorado job, leading to Petersen’s promotion from offensive coordinator. The Broncos would respond by going 13-0 and winning the Fiesta Bowl.

Marks:

We can't lose sight of the little things that really matter. First, taking care of the football. Second, making sure you're extremely humble. For that 2006 team, going through 2005 was good. They knew they couldn't just show up. They're going to have to compete and fight and do the little things right. We've always preached that, but until you've experienced that ...

Zabransky:

My class, I think we graduated with 12 guys that ended up on an NFL preseason roster. So we had to get over one of those hurdles of thinking we were probably better than we were. We were ranked 18th and Georgia was ranked 13th. That was the first big game of the year, and they're touting it, saying whoever wins this has a chance to go after something pretty large. We didn't prepare properly, and we learned a lot from it. I wouldn't have been able to do the things I did my senior season, just from an individual perspective, and I learned a lot from that game. And it was just the starting point of my development as being — and Chris Petersen would say this — it's different from being a quarterback and the quarterback. It's obviously never one person, but the 2005 campaign here, there were a lot of question marks within the locker room as far as the whole buying-in mentality. We didn't have a locker room that was all quote-unquote bought in. We had some guys who were questioning things, including myself.

Hall:

A lot of guys down the board were shaping up to be good players, but it was a humbling year. We thought we were going to walk over people, and that wasn't the case. A season like gets you back to the values that make you successful. We had to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate who we were as a team. Without that, the next year doesn't happen.

"They knew they couldn't just show up. They're going to have to compete and fight and do the little things right."

2008: TCU 17, Boise State 16: The paths of the nation’s two best 2000s mid-majors crossed often. They faced each other three times in bowls, and then TCU joined the MWC just in time to wreck BSU’s perfect 2011 with a 36-35 upset win.

Harsin:

After that [2008] game, I had a chance to talk to [TCU head coach] Gary Patterson, and it ended up being about an hour and a half conversation. Basically it was open. Here's what we thought about you defensively; here's what we thought about you offensively. So we just shared some things, and to listen to someone like him, who knows defense, it was amazing — he's unbelievable — as he kind of explained how they broke us down and what we do. Gary, being a head coach, embraced us enough to spend time with me as a coordinator, and it was unbelievable. I have such respect for that guy for how he treated me. So we ended up playing them the next year in the Fiesta Bowl! We ended up winning that game. So that loss was, for me personally, a major learning experience.

2010: Nevada 34, Boise State 31: BSU has won plenty of great games. In the 1980 I-AA championship, Joe Aliotti and Duane Diouhy connected for a 14-yard score with 12 seconds left to beat Eastern Kentucky, 31-29. And there was the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, the most beloved game of the 21st century.

In terms of quality, plot twists, and repercussions, one game might top even that one.

The 2010 loss to Nevada featured everything you could want.

Star power : Moore and Nevada’s Colin Kaepernick, a future Super Bowl quarterback, combined for 607 passing yards. BSU’s Doug Martin, who has rushed for over 4,000 career yards for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, had 230 combined rushing and receiving yards. Nevada’s Rishard Matthews, nearly a 1,000-yard receiver for the Tennessee Titans in 2016, caught 10 passes for 172 yards.

: Moore and Nevada’s Colin Kaepernick, a future Super Bowl quarterback, combined for 607 passing yards. BSU’s Doug Martin, who has rushed for over 4,000 career yards for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, had 230 combined rushing and receiving yards. Nevada’s Rishard Matthews, nearly a 1,000-yard receiver for the Tennessee Titans in 2016, caught 10 passes for 172 yards. A comeback : BSU scored on all four of its first-half possessions and took a 24-7 lead into halftime; the Wolf Pack scored the next 17.

: BSU scored on all four of its first-half possessions and took a 24-7 lead into halftime; the Wolf Pack scored the next 17. Last-minute drama : Kaepernick and Mathews connected for the game-tying touchdown with 13 seconds left, but Moore found Titus Young on a 53-yard bomb.

: Kaepernick and Mathews connected for the game-tying touchdown with 13 seconds left, but Moore found Titus Young on a 53-yard bomb. College kickers: With two seconds left, all-WAC kicker Kyle Brotzman barely missed a 26-yard field goal. In overtime, Brotzman missed a 29-yarder, and Nevada won.

The Broncos wouldn’t have made the BCS title game that year thanks to two unbeaten power-conference champions — 13-0 Auburn would beat 12-0 Oregon — but the loss relegated them from a third BCS bowl in five seasons to the Maaco Bowl in Las Vegas.

Despite such a demoralizing defeat, the Broncos manhandled Utah State to end the regular season, then held Utah at bay in Vegas. They would finish in the AP top 11 for the third time in four years; they would make it four in five the next fall.

Harsin:

That loss against Nevada in 2010 ... our kicker takes a lot of heat in that game, but we had every chance. We were up in that game, had a chance to put a foot on their throat, and we didn't do it. We started thinking about, ‘The next thing is gonna be that bowl game’ and all that. Sometimes when you get up ... you don't take your foot off the gas, but that was one of the times when I felt like the outside crept in. That to me was more frustrating. We allowed ourselves as players to let some of that stuff creep in a little bit. I think the kids were a lot more resilient than the coaches, though. Our players busted their ass after that.

Potter:

I think a lot of it had to do with pride and the amount of work that we put in as a team. To go through something like that and just give up, just tank the rest of the season, that's not fair to the fans or the coaches or ourselves. A lot of it's just pride, being confident in the type of team we were. That just wasn't in our DNA.

Chapter 4: Never forget the wins

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The teams that are likely to win in the future are the ones that have won in the past. A lot of that has to do with resources. Programs that were good 100 years ago got a head start on the infrastructure and booster base.

That’s the BSU recipe, even if we didn’t start paying attention until 15 years ago. At the junior college level, the Broncos didn’t suffer a losing season between 1946-67. Since moving to full undergraduate status in 1968, they have suffered only five.

"It's up to the older guys to show the younger guys, this is how we do things."

The benefit to winning is that your fourth- and fifth-year players get all the evidence on how winning happens, then set the example for the rookies.

The more coaches you talk to, the more you realize just how much this evidence is needed. The coaches are only around so much of the time. Players can only deliver a message to each other if they believe in it.

Pitman:

Really, Boise State, since the JC times and all the way through, have always had winning programs. I think we've had maybe five losing seasons? And one of them was my senior year. There ain't a day that goes by that I don't think about that. My plan was that if I ever became the strength coach here, that I was going to do everything in my power to get the players to understand the importance of flat outworking everyone you play.

Avalos:

I think the coaches had that plan in place that we would just work, and that was just kind of driven into us. If your guys outwork your opponents, if you have fun, you do it as a team, you get that taste of success. You win some games, and you're like, well shoot, they're right.

Marks:

It's about the players believing in the process and the culture that was there before them. It's up to the older guys to show the younger guys this is how we do things. Ultimately with coaches, it's like the parent and the kid; it goes through one ear and out the other. But if you're listening to your peers, your older peers, it really helps. Leadership is a big deal, but it falls back on how much experience those older guys really have.

Avalos:

When we were running plays [without the coaches around] in the summer time, I mean, we were working. And if things weren't right, the quarterbacks were yelling at the wide receivers. We were on top of each other and holding each other accountable. That was the culture here. You're going to hold yourself accountable, and we're gonna hold ourselves accountable. You’re gonna understand what's expected of you. I mean it's football, yeah, but what a lot of us got out of it was —

Zabransky:

Life lessons.

Avalos:

Yeah, that's who you are now. When you get out of bed in the morning and your two feet hit the ground, you've still got that Boise State in you. That's maybe the best thing that anyone can get going through this program. You get your degree, but you get more than a degree. You get to learn about going about your business in a way that a lot of people don't. When it was time to show up in practice, you went. If you didn't go, the coaches didn't need to say much. I'm sure the coaches would say there were days when we could have been better, but overall, I could remember individuals on both sides of the ball, and more importantly special teams guys, they practiced like the lights were on and the stadium was full.

Zabransky:

PPT! Those Perfect Practice Thursdays that we had and they still have. That was probably the third day of the scout team knowing what we were running, and they know the ball is going to a certain place. But that ball never hit the ground. If the ball did hit the ground, you did it over, but we rarely had to do that. We were 95 percent accuracy during those days. Whenever you can get guys that continue to harness that same culture of success here, it's going to be a snowball effect. With the success, they're now able to go out and get guys that are 6'4 instead of 6'2.

Franklin:

As a player, for me, we didn't have all this. We didn't have this facility. We bring in new guys, and it's like ‘Yeah, you're here, but you didn't build this. You didn't do anything yet. You've gotta work even harder than the guys who played here.’

Zabransky:

[When Hawkins left], we were told a lot of things that didn't come, that weren't honest. We were told that if there was going to be a coaching change, that we would hear it first. That wasn't the case. We read it on the ticker at 5:30 a.m. before a 5:45 workout. But when he left, that culture was able to stay and live through the players. Every time there has been coaching turnover, the culture that was left here was the same culture left here 30 years ago.

Chapter 5: Consolidate

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Pitman:

Hawk went around to everybody and said, ‘Hey, in your area, what do you need, to succeed?’ I was like, this is just another thing Hawk's having us do. So I [wrote down requests, starting with a new weight room]. And when Fresno came up here the next year, we beat them 67-to-whatever [21], Hawk tells me I need to listen to the press conference or the booster luncheon or something that Monday after the game. I'm thinking, ‘I don't know why I need to listen to this, but whatever.’ I heard him doing something with a piece of paper [makes rustling sound], and he goes, ‘You guys like that win?’ Of course everybody goes nuts. He goes, ‘If you want that to continue, this is what you're gonna do.’ He named off a new weight room and all these other things. You could hear a pin drop. But he said, if you want us to stay here, we need all these things. I thought that was really ballsy of Hawk, and it needed to be done. That was to me the moment that everybody was kinda like, well okay, we're taking the next step.

If you’re looking for the next Boise State, the next mid-major that could be capable of playing at a top level for a sustained period of time, it wouldn’t hurt to start by looking at the programs that play within pretty large cities with corporate resources. But it also wouldn’t hurt for those universities to build the kind of relationships that Boise State has with Boise.

Boise semiconductor producer Micron has its name on multiple campus buildings. The Boise-hosted bowl used to be the MicronPC Bowl. Albertsons, a Boise-based grocery store, has the naming rights to the stadium. Norco has its name on a campus building. Sponsorships within the stadium have increased, and when more luxury boxes were put in, they were filled.

The football offices, where Hawkins' daydreaming field was, are top-notch. The weight room got its upgrade.

You invest in Boise State football, you invest in BSU, and BSU agrees to keep winning games.

Chapter 6: Now what?

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The Broncos are as sound as ever. Among Group of 5 programs, their last recruiting classes have ranked third, fifth, first, eighth, and third in the 247Sports Composite, respectively. Their ranking among MWC teams: first, first, first, first, and first.

Whereas other G5 programs fluctuate depending on the head coach, BSU keeps on rolling. They have won 31 games in Harsin’s three years. And after the slightest of downturns, they finished in the S&P+ top 20 last year for the first time since 2011.

They didn’t win the MWC, though. They didn’t in 2015 either. They didn’t make the conference title game either year.

The hunter is the hunted, and in a division that features a variety of offensive styles and most of the MWC’s good teams, the Broncos have been unable to escape unscathed. They lost 52-26 at Utah State in 2015, thanks in part to an incredible eight turnovers (they had only 14 in the other 12 games), and fell to New Mexico and Air Force at home; last year, they lost via safety dance at Wyoming and dropped a third straight to Air Force.

Harsin is 5-2 against power conference teams, but the conference rivals — the teams full of players who might have wished they were recruited by BSU — are landing shots.

If this has caused an identity crisis of sorts, no one is letting on.

Avalos:

Number one, it’s football. The Mountain West is pretty good. There’s teams in the Mountain West that play very good football and have very good players in this day and age. It's a level playing field to a certain extent because everything's on the internet now. There's not many guys out there that are hidden, that are diamonds, that you can slide in. It doesn't matter who we're playing from week to week. If you don't bring your A-game, you're going to get beat. You could be going to the SEC, Pac-12, you could be playing [an FCS] team, it doesn't matter. If you don't show up with your A-game, and they do, then don't expect anything but.

Harsin:

The teams in this conference, I have a lot of respect for the coaches. They're doing a tremendous job, just watching how they're doing their jobs. Our division is extremely competitive. The venues that we play, the opportunities that we get, and the variety that we get in this league — you’ve got two triple-option teams, you've got pro-style, you've got your spread, you've got everything. This is the one conference where you have every single style. If you're a fan of college football, and you want to see fun things, watch this conference. And if you're into the game itself, watch how teams attack those different types of challenges every week.

Chapter 7: Have fun

It wasn’t that they did it; it’s that they did it twice.

Harsin doesn’t wait for me to finish asking him when they put the Statue of Liberty play, the one that won the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, into the game plan for the 2014 Fiesta Bowl. He’s already jumped in on the answer.

"First play we put in. Absolutely. We even laughed about it.

"You’re back, and you ran it, and at that point in that season, we'd won our championship, we're gonna play in the Fiesta Bowl, and it's exciting. You're sitting in there, and there's confidence, and it's like, ‘We're running that.’

"In true trick play fashion, we run it, but the running back has to break 85 tackles to make it work. Jay Ajayi goes out there and runs over four guys. So it worked out pretty good!"

Legendary Florida State coach Bobby Bowden used to say that there's no sense in having trick plays if you don't use them. He used plenty of them — a game-deciding fake field goal against Southern Miss in 1982, the famous "puntrooskie" against Clemson, a double-pass long bomb against Florida in the 1995 Sugar Bowl — and less frequently once he had a talent advantage, but reserved the right to call them.

"The thing about Coach Bowden and trick plays," said former FSU quarterback Casey Weldon, "it's not just a trick play to have fun. It keeps defenses honest and makes them practice for them."

It helped the Noles build an identity and forced big opponents to over-prepare. After a while, FSU’s reputation meant the Noles didn’t even have to call the plays. Everybody was using valuable prep time to account for them regardless.

You could say the same thing about Boise State.

Franklin:

The culture here, it's what got me [during his recruitment]. The people, this community. The coaching staff, they were all young coaches, they had knowledge, they were innovative, the trick plays. I'm like, man, they're doing all kinds of stuff.

Marks:

To me, you have to not be scared to take risks. I think that's what made us unique: our style of football, our offense. We weren't afraid to call trick plays, and we definitely practiced those trick plays a lot. So it became a part of our system. In that respect, as I’ve gone from program to program and coached in different places, they did not do it that way at all.

Harsin:

Creativity is a big part of who we are. That's in everything we do, and it carries over into the football part of it. So how do you do that? Well, you come up with some trick plays, and I mean, they're fun. And it was us having smart coaches having fun and being creative. We've always run them, but the way the [2007] Fiesta Bowl just laid itself out, it was like, ‘Alright, that's all they do.’ That's not necessarily the case, but it is a part of who we are.

Postscript: The coaching lineage

Boise State athletics

Harsin on Allen:

So Dave Stachelski and I, we're in the hallway, and Pokey stops by and starts talking to us. He's talking to Dave — Dave was a really kind of freakish tight end, really good player — he could see the potential in Dave, and I happened to be there with him. He's talking about, ‘Dave, you've gotta do this and that.’ I'm just sitting there, listening to them. He says a few things to Dave and then turns to me and says, ‘Hey, I'm going to give you a scholarship, too.’ And then he just left. Just went back about his business. That was obviously a big moment, and that's when we still had pay phones, so I walked down the hall, didn't have a quarter, but Dan Brown, the linebackers coach at the time, he threw a quarter on the ground and I picked it up, and I got chance to call my dad and tell him. My dad's got some stories about Pokey, about drag racing and all that, but that's was a big one for me personally.

Hendricks on Koetter:

Koetter was very good on preparation. That was his coaching style. He brought a system, and not just an offensive system, but the whole thing, the training side, the meeting side. It was a different time. Nobody would stick around during the summer at that time, but Koetter brought in the whole package from all of his experiences at bigger schools, the structure around everything. The one thing I remember — and Coach Harsin can attest to this because we made fun of Koetter after the fact — but we played Nevada. This was '99, and we were really good, and we knew we were good. We were not playing terrible, because we were winning, but we should have been playing better. Anyway, right before the half, I think we were up 24-10 or something like that, and their quarterback was scrambling, long touchdown he had no business scoring. Koetter was already upset with me with the way things were going offensively, and he was just livid after that. I remember this little locker room, and there's a wooden stool in there, and he destroyed that thing. Destroyed it. And then we came back out, and I don't think Nevada scored again. [Final score: BSU 52, Nevada 17.] That was kind of a turning point in terms of us kicking butt. That's something we can joke about now. He was kind of level-headed, but when he got upset, it meant something. It was a specific way of ... okay, yeah, he's upset.

Harsin on Koetter:

He had interviewed when Houston [Nutt] got the job. So when Dirk got that job, I remember he was introduced to the team, and one of the first things out of his mouth was, ‘You should have hired me in the first place.’ I liked it. I liked the edge, and immediately I was drawn to him. I like Dirk.

Boise State athletics

Franklin on Hawkins:

I don't know what year it was, but it was back when you had two-a-days. This was all a grass field [motioning to the north of the stadium, where new athletic facilities have since been built]. There was nothing here. We're practicing, it's one of the afternoon practices. It's hot, and he stops practice and says ‘Everybody, take a knee.’ Alright. ‘Alright, lay down.’ Lay down? ‘Close your eyes. Be quiet.’ We all lay there. Some guys are falling asleep. It was a visualization thing. He's talking real slow, real calm. ‘See yourself doing this, see yourself doing that, really feel it.’ Guys who did it, really felt it. I think he was talking about the season, see yourself doing this and that, and it was like, dang, okay. We had a great practice that day. That stuck with me. From that day on, I came into the locker room pre-game and visualized myself doing things and making plays. I used to be at my locker, man, and I'd be in full sweat, visualizing the whole game. When I did that, I made plays. We all called him a guru and all that, and we thought it was goofy, but that was huge. He always had those kinda tricks.

Marks on Hawkins:

Everybody sees the yin and the yang, the philosophy, but don't get it confused. He might be the most highly competitive person I've been around. My favorite was when we got into a little bit of a scuffle with San Jose State out here in [2003]. He got so mad because they pushed one of our coaches. He was furious, so he came in the locker room at halftime and said, ‘We're gonna try to score 100 points.’ I think we scored like 70. [77, actually.] And he's mad that we didn't score 100. He really wanted to. I've never seen him that mad before. ‘We're going to try ... to ... score ... 100 points.’

Avalos on Petersen:

As a young assistant coach here with Coach Pete, I wanted to make sure I did stuff right to please him. I wanted to satisfy him doing my job. There was no fear factor, and if he needed you to be better at something, he'd tell you — he'd COACH you. Coach Pete coaches his coaches.

Franklin on Petersen:

I used to come to him before games [when Petersen was OC] and say, ‘How many points are we going to score today, Coach?’ ‘Ah, like 40.’ ‘Perfect.’

Zabransky on Petersen:

He did the fullest of everything. If someone was watching 10 hours a day of film, he was watching 12. There's other people doing as much as they possibly can, and if I'm not doing at least as much as they are, plus a little bit more, I'm not doing enough. He would be like, ‘Jared, you're not watching enough film.’ And I'm thinking, it's frickin' Friday, and I've watched 35 hours of film this week, and I'm not watching enough film? You wanted to make sure you were doing everything you could because if he was questioning you at all, you questioned yourself.

Potter on Petersen:

Pete can be all business, very focused, even now with Washington. But my favorite Pete story is, there was one time the offensive line was messing around in the team room and everybody was dancing. Coach Pete walked in and the music was blaring, and we started chanting his name, and he just busted into the Robot out of nowhere. Everybody lost it because they had no idea there was that side of him. That's kinda the type of guy he was; when it's football, he's all business, but he's well-rounded.

Photo by Otto Kitsinger III/Getty Images

Harsin on Petersen: