BCS Rankings 2011: There's No Need to Hate Boise State

The backlash had to be expected.

When Boise State took the No. 4 ranking in this week’s BCS standings, you knew an uproar would ensue, and the overrated chants would ring loud and clear.

The Broncos have somehow managed to turn from cute little story into college football’s most taboo team.

We've heard all the critiques.

“They don’t play anybody”

“They aren’t worthy.”

“Overrated, overrated, overrated!”

Boise State’s been down this road before and it’s nothing new for the smurfs to deal with.

No matter how many BCS teams they schedule, no matter how many wins they pile up year after year, the fact is, college football fans are a tough crowd to please, and the Broncos have found that out the hard way recently.

After a not so impressive 37-26 victory over Air Force on Saturday, most college football fans around the country were ready to dismiss Boise State as a fraud and a pretender, even though the Broncos’ 7-0 record this season would seem to indicate quite the contrary.

This is the type of season where style points seem like they are going to count for a lot, and beating a decent/mediocre Air Force team on your home field by eleven points just isn’t going to impress many folks, especially since the Broncos have managed to beat just one ranked team all season long.

So when Boise State took the No. 4 ranking behind LSU, Alabama and Oklahoma State in the Week 9 BCS rankings, the complaint crew came out in full effect.

How the hell could Boise State be ranked ahead of Clemson and Stanford is the question many posed.

Clemson and Stanford are BCS schools, dammit. Boise State is just out there on that silly blue turf, beating up on the nobodies of the college football world.

That seemed to be the prevailing thought that anyone without an Idaho driver’s license tried to express on the many social media platforms that the Internet has blessed us with.

As they say, success breeds contempt, and it’s been both intriguing, yet also very heartbreaking to witness how America has turned on this team.

I can still vividly remember sitting in an Embassy Suites hotel room in Jacksonville that New Year’s day back in 2007, soaking up my alma mater West Virginia’s win over Georgia Tech in the Gator Bowl, and flipping on the Fiesta Bowl late that night and watching Boise State take down big bad Oklahoma in one of the most compelling finishes to a football game I’ve ever seen.

At the time, I remember thinking to myself, wow, Boise State just shocked the world; this is a great moment for a school that’s been knocking on the door for the last few years.

Little did I know then that a young man named Kellen Moore would come along and team up with a fresh-faced new young head coach, Chris Petersen, and elevate the Boise State program to the place where only college football dreams are made of.

Once viewed as a quirky, fun small-school afterthought, Boise State has risen to remarkable heights during the Moore-Petersen era, as the Broncos have won 45 of their last 47 games, dating back to 2008.

That’s the type of consistency that deserves some recognition and respect.

It’s easy to take the cop out argument and say Boise State doesn’t play anybody, but honestly, if you lined up the Broncos with Stanford and Clemson’s schedules, would you realistically expect that Boise State wouldn’t still be undefeated at this point in the season?

I’m fairly confident the Broncos could handle the likes of Wofford, San Jose State, Troy, Duke, Arizona, Colorado, Washington State,  Boston College, Maryland, need I continue?

There’s no need to hate on Boise State.

I don’t want to stoop to the level of the “Don’t hate, appreciate” mugs and t-shirt crowd, but it’s a fitting phrase for this Boise State team right now.

The “Well, they could never handle a big boy conference” argument can only go so far before you have to say, well, why don’t we finally just give them a shot in the big game, and actually see what their made of thought has to prevail.

If you gave me Kellen Moore against the LSU or Alabama defense, or him matching up with Brandon Weeden or Andrew Luck, I’d have two bowls of popcorn ready, eager to sit down and watch that kind of national title game.

Will it happen?

I have no idea. We have to wait and see how the rest of the season play out.

I know one thing, though, if Boise State runs the table and somehow find its way into the national title game, you won’t find me complaining at all.

You can only throw the Broncos on the back burner for so long and call them overrated so many times before you finally have to say, OK, we might as well just give them a shot to show whether they have what it takes or not.

If they get that chance this year and actually make the most of it, hopefully, every one of their critics and doubters will have to eat their words and say we shouldn’t have had so much hate for Boise State.