Boise State took over college football’s big stage on Saturday as Ashton Jeanty’s bid for the Heisman Trophy put the spotlight on the Broncos.
Another big moment on the main stage is coming when the Broncos face off in the playoff Fiesta Bowl quarterfinals on New Year’s Eve.
The opportunity to compete for a national championship and Jeanty competing for the Heisman both represent new heights, adding to what has been a meteoric and steady rise over more than two decades. These milestones are a dramatic change from just a year ago, when Boise State football reached a turning point in its story.
The Broncos ended their 2023 season with a 35–22 loss to UCLA in the LA Bowl, concluding an 8–6 campaign. The six losses were the program’s most in a season since 1997, in only the second year since Boise State moved from Division I-AA to Division I-A.
There are falling years, even for dynasties.
Given that Boise State has won more than 10 games 18 times from 1999 to 2022 — including five of the six non-COVID seasons from 2016 to 2022 — the six-loss campaign may seem like an aberration. Is.
However, with a 7-5 record in 2021, the Broncos finished two campaigns in a three-year span with a winning percentage below .600. The program had not faced such a strain since the first three seasons of IA membership.
College football came out of the pandemic in a completely different landscape than when it entered.
Supreme Court decision in National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston On June 21, 2021, allowing athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness (NIL) was one of a series of transformational changes. The SEC’s announcement a month after its expansion to include Oklahoma and Texas marked the beginning of a consolidation of power, with the Big Ten systematically splitting up the Pac-12 starting in 2022.
Boise State has defied the odds to become a powerhouse over the past two decades. In an ecosystem dominated by mega-conferences, NIL collectivity and an essentially open transfer market, how can the Broncos realistically beat those odds?
So far, Spencer Danielson has provided the answer.
The 2023 season ended in disappointment, but also foreshadowed the Broncos’ run in the College Football Playoff — and it started at a low level.
Boise State fell to 4–5 after a November 4 loss at Fresno State, facing the real possibility of its first sub-.500 finish in 26 years. The Broncos defeated New Mexico the following week, but then-head coach Andy Avalos’ fate was sealed.
He was fired, and defensive coordinator Danielson was promoted to interim coach. A member of the BSU staff since 2017, Danielson had spent a lot of time becoming familiar with the program and the roadmap to success there.
“My No. 1 goal,” Danielson said shortly after last year’s L.A. Bowl loss, “is to continue to make Boise State a place where players come, stay, develop and play in the NFL.”
It’s a good feeling. Actually implementing it is another challenge.
The first step required a proof of concept, and putting Jeanty on the blue field was the perfect start.
On December 12, two days before the Heisman ceremony, Jeanty received the Doc Walker Award As the best running back in college football. In his address via satellite, surrounded by family, the Texas native said: “That’s why I stayed at Boise State, because everything I wanted to achieve would be possible in Boise.”
Jeanty couldn’t have provided a better one-sentence endorsement of Boise State as a consistent player in this new era of college football. His placement in the first round of many NFL mock drafts likewise stands as testament to the vision Danielson touted a year ago.
In preparing players like Jeanty for the NFL, structuring an NFL-like program is another step in Danielson’s mission to maintain Boise State’s place among the sport’s elite. In November, the university athletic department announced BroncoPro, a revenue-sharing entity that includes front-office management equivalent to a professional organization.
In just 13 months since Danielson took over, Boise State has evolved from a potentially fading power of a bygone era to a program solidifying its future.
