College Football Playoff Committee Welcomes Boise State Back to the Big Time
Boise State is headed to a marquee bowl for the first time since 2009, when it beat TCU 17-10 in the Fiesta Bowl.
The College Football Playoff selection committee announced Sunday that the No. 20 Broncos will play No. 10 Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl December 31 in Glendale, Arizona.
Boise State won the Mountain West Conference with a 28-14 win over Fresno State Saturday, finishing the season 11-2. One of those losses came on a neutral field to No. 9 Ole Miss in Week 1. The other came against a plucky Air Force team in Week 5. Its eight consecutive wins are tied for the third-longest streak in the country.
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In the BCS era, there is no way an 11-2 Broncos team would have made an Access Bowl. Thanks to the CFP, which mandates that the highest-ranked champion from a "Group of Five" conference be included, they will be back in Glendale for the third time in nine years.
Not a bad first season for head coach Bryan Harsin.
Harsin came to Boise after one year as the head coach at Arkansas State. He spent the previous two years as the co-offensive coordinator at Texas and the nine years before that as an assistant with the Broncos.
From 2006 to 2010, Harsin was the offensive coordinator under head coach Chris Petersen, a Boise State legend who in December 2013 became the head coach at Washington. Petersen had flirted with and shot down a number of high-profile jobs in the past, so when he left it seemed the Boise State "dynasty" might be dead.
But Harsin never wavered from the standard he helped Petersen establish. This is one of the most balanced teams in college football, a roster with no discernible weak spot. The pass defense is the only unit on either side of the ball that does not rank in the national Top 40 in yards per game, and even that is a misleading number.
The Broncos rank No. 5 in the country with 20 interceptions.
| Pass Offense | 278.2 | 26 | 8.8 | 12 |
| Rush Offense | 217.9 | 31 | 4.9 | 34 |
| Pass Defense | 225.0 | 62 | 6.7 | 41 |
| Rush Defense | 141.5 | 36 | 4.0 | 47 |
Much like the other great Boise State teams of the past decade—the 2007 and 2010 Fiesta Bowl Champions—this year's team is led by one of the best backfields in college football: dual-threat quarterback Grant Hedrick and running back Jay Ajayi.
Hedrick ranks No. 9 in the country in passer rating (157.78) and has rushed for 563 yards and eight touchdowns. He is No. 19 in ESPN's Total QBR metric, which adjusts for rushing stats and context. Only two non-power-five quarterbacks rank higher.
But Ajayi is the real star of the team. The 6'0", 216-pound bruiser is a redshirt junior but will likely declare for the NFL draft this offseason.
It is rare to find a player with his size and power who can also move like a scatback and catch like a tight end. He ranks No. 9 in the country in rushing yards per game (179.69) and No. 2 in rushing touchdowns (25) and flashed his versatility with 12 catches for 93 yards against Ole Miss in Week 1.
"Most of the national attention on the running back position has been directed towards Melvin Gordon, Telvin Coleman and James Conner for their spectacular efforts, but Ajayi is beginning to generate some buzz on the West Coast with his sensational production as the Broncos' workhorse runner," wrote Bucky Brooks of NFL.com.
Better late than never, I suppose.
Even with Petersen in Seattle, Boise State is the Alabama of non-power-conference football. It is the team every other team wants to beat. And for that, Harsin takes more (or at least different) pride in this year's achievements than anything he accomplished in the past.
"For the guys in our program right now, this is the most difficult time to win a championship, because Boise State is on the map," Harsin told reporters after Saturday's win. "And that’s what I’m most proud of, to go out there every single week and know that we have a history and a record. We still step out there and give their very best.
"I don’t know if there is a another group, not to take anything away [from previous teams], but it’s been five years and one last time on the blue as seniors in particular, that’s what they’ve set out to do."
We all know what happened the first time Boise State made the Fiesta Bowl. With Petersen at the helm, it upset Adrian Peterson's Oklahoma Sooners with a hook-and-lateral at the end of regulation and a statue-of-liberty two-point conversion in overtime.
The Broncos will not shock the world with another win, which in part speaks to the state of their own program and in part speaks to the widespread opinion of Arizona, which looked awful, to put it kindly, in the Pac-12 Championship Game against Oregon. But in some ways, that might be more fitting. Boise State is in no shape to be shocking anyone or anything. Not anymore, it isn't.
When it wins, we should all nod our heads.
Follow Brian Leigh on Twitter: @BLeighDAT
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