Boise St. Broncos

The 2010 Boise State Broncos were a really good football team, trapped in a really bad conference, and this
made them the lightning rod of the college football landscape.

BSU's inexorable march toward college football Armageddon made its way through Sports Illustrated covers
and prime-time wins and fifty-burgers against tragically poor WAC teams.

But a funny thing happened on the way to eternal vilification and BCS championship glory.

The Broncos lost to Nevada in one of the absolute worst ways possible, like how Hollywood football teams
lose in movies where the purpose is to teach life lessons In a five-minute span, the Broncos went from the
verge of BCS busting to Las Vegas Bowl middling.

Boise State is again a favorite to work its way into a BCS bowl and hang around the Top Ten all season
long. Credit goes to Boise State head coach Chris Petersen who has built a program strong enough to
withstand a myriad of defections to the NFL, a hilarious NCAA investigation involving blow-up mattresses,
and the sand-to-pearl pressure of maintaining a near-perfect record year-in and year-out.

Of course, Petersen has some big guns to lean on. Kellen Moore will be the NCAA’s all-time winningest
quarterback when all is said and done, and he figures to get invited back to New York City to watch
someone else take Moore’s well-deserved Heisman Trophy. The Bronco defensive line is BCS quality, and
its talent in the backfield and across the secondary (future pros like Doug Martin and George Iloka) are as
good as they come in the Mountain West.

Oh yeah, the Mountain West. Boise State will be calling a new conference home this season, and while it
won’t be as competitive as the Broncos thought when they signed on to a MWC with BYU and Utah, the
Broncos are still expected to face a tougher schedule than in years past. Games against Georgia and TCU
coupled with the loads of returning talent at all the right positions makes the 2011 Boise State football team
almost as dangerous and almost as hyped as last year’s group.