Boise State Football

With his program in a lull and the landscape of college football changing, now may be the right time for Boise State head coach Chris Petersen to pursue a new challenge.

Petersen has an 89-11 record, five conference championships three perfect regular seasons and two BCS bowl victories in his eight seasons at Boise State. 

The achievement eluding Petersen is a national championship—a milestone that the impending College Football Playoff renders all the more difficult for a program outside the sphere of influence. 

Some of college football's most prestigious jobs could be open this offseason: Nebraska’s fan base has frustrations with Bo Pelini, Mack Brown is nearing retirement at Texas and Lane Kiffin's firing from USC last month left the West's most storied program in need of a new leader.

Petersen’s name already surfaced in rumors around the USC vacancy. 

There’s no doubt he’ll be mentioned frequently in this year’s coaching-search season. But what else is new?

The Pac-12 already beckoned once, when UCLA offered a reported $4 million. And like he has every other head coaching vacancy, Petersen declined.

CBSSports.com reporter Bruce Feldman writes "probably not," in reference to a Petersen-to-USC move, but adds a "source close to Petersen [said]...[Petersen] is looking for a change." 

Like Mark Few with Gonzaga basketball, Petersen didn't lay the groundwork for his program's success, but he has built on the foundation to erect something that’s nationally-recognized.

Like Few, Petersen has remained committed to building in an era when coaches chase the next big payday or the more prominent spotlight.   

Petersen has also seen predecessors leave for greener pastures than Boise State’s Smurf Turf, only to discover it isn’t so rosy elsewhere.

Dan Hawkins lasted five tumultuous seasons at Colorado, and he’s now out of coaching. Dirk Koetter had limited success at Arizona State and now works as an assistant for the Atlanta Falcons. 

Expectations at Boise State are different than at Pac-12 programs and so is competition. But then, so is the potential.  

Boise State is in the same pursuit as college football’s top tier programs and is trying to bridge the gap. It recently invested in its future with $22 million in facility upgrades to try keeping pace in the football arms race.

“That thing has so many bells and whistles…it’s really going to change the game at Boise State,” quarterback Joe Southwick said at Mountain West media day this summer. “Recruits will come in and ooh and aah.”

The Broncos need that element because recruiting success has not been commensurate with on-field victories. No Boise State signing class under Petersen has been ranked higher than No. 53, according to Rivals.com.

While recruits collectively ranked between 50 and 80 climbing into the Top 25 routinely isn’t too great of a leap, consistently breaking into the Top 10 is.

Petersen has routinely done more with less, but the law of averages is beginning to catch up with Boise State.

Friday’s 37-20 loss to Brigham Young dropped the Broncos to 5-3, matching the most losses for a Petersen-coached team in a single season.

Last year, Boise State also dropped a home game for the second time in as many campaigns en route to splitting the Mountain West championship three ways.

Recruiting to Boise State will always prove challenging without the allure of high-profile matchups or national championship, the latter of which will become increasingly difficult.

Unfortunately for the Broncos, where Few’s Gonzaga teams can play for the title in the NCAA tournament, the College Football Playoff threatens to further ostracize programs like Boise State from title contention.  

When the Broncos agreed to join the Mountain West in June 2010, they were coming to a conference with Fiesta Bowl-participant TCU, which won the following season's Rose Bowl, Utah, a perennial Top 25 program and BYU.   

Utah and TCU were both lured away with offers from automatic-qualifier conferences, and BYU went independent in pursuit of greater exposure. Petersen's program was left in a league that looked very much like the Western Athletic Conference it left.

Meanwhile, rumors of the so-called Group of Five eliminating all pretenses and forging its own Div. IV circulate. Such a schism would end any hope for Petersen to win the top college football championship at Boise State.

The outset of the Playoff is the perfect time for Petersen to embark on a new challenge. Pac-12 Country just might provide the perfect landing spot for him. 

Kyle Kensing is the Pac-12 Lead Writer for B/R. All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Follow Kyle on Twitter: @kensing45.

It only took one play on Saturday night for Bronco Nation to collectively hold its breath.

Not long after, fans at Bronco Stadium began to breathe again. But instead of sighs of relief, the exhales were more like short gasps that signaled an emotion somewhere between shock and panic.

Joe Southwick had been diagnosed with a broken ankle, and his return is not known.

So the Broncos, which, heading into Saturday night’s game with Nevada, were 4-2 overall and 2-1 in the Mountain West Conference, would hinge their chances of keeping pace with Utah State in the Mountain Division on a junior from Independence, Ore. Up to that point, he had only attempted a total of 16 passes for Boise State this season.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Grant Hedrick.

Chances are, fans of the Broncos would have gotten to know Hedrick well at some point during his career in Boise. What’s surprising is that it’s happening about half-a-season early.

Next year, Joe Southwick will be gone. Hedrick, the No. 2 guy for the current campaign, has been seeing more of the field than any of the other candidates for next year’s starting job. While it’s sure to be an open contest, it appears as though Hedrick has a definite leg up on the competition.

So while Southwick’s injury is definitely a blow to a team that appears to be finding its footing on both sides of the ball, perhaps it’s not the "Kiss of Death" for Boise State.

In fact, it may be good for the Broncos. Perhaps not for this season but definitely for the future.

Back to Saturday night’s game.

A visibly shaken Boise State offense has a hard time moving the ball in the first half with Hedrick at the helm. Hedrick’s first drive ended abruptly with an interception. The next two drives ended with the Broncos punting the ball away.

By the end of the first half, the Broncos trailed Nevada, 17-7.

But something happened in the second half that should get Boise State fans excited for the rest of the season.

Hedrick calmed down. The rest of the offense followed suit. The coaching staff put their trust in Jay Ajayi, and things took off. The redshirt sophomore carried the load for the Broncos offense, taking advantage of the MWC’s worst run defense and racking up 222 yards on 24 carries.

Hedrick did his part, too, rushing for 115 yards and two scores on the ground.

In one half of football, Bronco Nation saw what the Broncos may look like in 2014. Considering the fact that Boise State ending up winning, 34-17, outscoring the Wolf Pack, 27-0, in the second half, the future looked pretty good.

Few Boise State fans would say they prefer Southwick over Hedrick for this season. But in a way, the injury could help the Broncos.

Let’s take a look at the facts.

Boise State is 5-2 overall and leads the Mountain Division of the Mountain West Conference by way of a tiebreaker with Utah State.

There are definitely some hurdles left, but nothing that the Broncos are incapable of clearing. Road games against BYU, Colorado State and San Diego State appear to be the major tests left on the schedule.

The BYU game will likely be the toughest of the three. But the outcome of that matchup doesn’t have any bearing on the Mountain West standings, and thus, the likelihood that the Broncos will participate in the inaugural MWC Championship Game.

Even more encouraging is the fact that San Diego State and Colorado State are two of the worst teams in the conference at stopping the pass. The Aztecs give up just over 280 yards per contest, while the Rams allow just less than 300 yards per game through the air.

If there was one area Boise State would like teams to have a weakness, it would be at stopping the passing game.

Triggering the run game is less of a problem. Hedrick is a much more dynamic runner than Southwick and coupled with Ajayi the Broncos will now have a dangerous rushing attack.

Obviously, this is looking at Boise State’s remaining 2013 campaign with a “best-case scenario” slant.

But the worst-case scenario isn’t all that scary.

Maybe Hedrick won’t have success against San Diego State and Colorado State’s defenses, which are better at stopping the run than Nevada. Or maybe, teams will figure out that Hedrick isn’t comfortable throwing downfield and give him nothing in the five to ten yard range.

Maybe Boise State will struggle and won’t end up in the MWC title game.

But hey, the winner of that game heads to the Las Vegas Bowl unless it receives a BCS bid. Aren’t Broncos fans a little tired of that game anyway?

Plus, Hedrick will have gained a lot of experience that he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, which only bodes well for next season.

This is Boise State’s chance to see the future. And if Saturday’s game was any indication, the future looks pretty bright.

Stats are courtesy of cfbstats.com, unless noted otherwise.

Fans of the Boise State Broncos football team hear it almost every year when head-coaching positions at big-time programs open up—will Chris Petersen leave the school for greener pastures?

Well, what exactly are greener pastures for Chris Petersen?

College football fans around the nation love to speculate. For many, greener pastures are somewhere in the state of California. Petersen’s name has been thrown around in conversations to be USC’s next permanent head coach, and he was in the discussion last year when California was looking for a new head man. In 2011, Petersen turned down an actual offer from UCLA.

Petersen is from California, and both played and started his coaching career at UC Davis. But he’s already turned down one of the two most prestigious football schools in the state, and there hasn’t been strong evidence yet to suggest he’s seriously considering the other one.

For others, greener pastures mean a spot in the toughest conference in college football: the SEC. There were rumblings last year linking Petersen to the vacant Arkansas job, and based on the amount of money the Razorbacks are paying Bret Bielema, the school would have been able to offer quite a bit.

Instead, Petersen remains at Boise State. A school located in an area over 18 times smaller than metropolitan Los Angeles. Whose football program plays in the Mountain West Conference, not the Pac-12 or SEC.

Petersen is college football’s only two-time winner of the Paul “Bear” Bryant Award, which is given annually to the national coach of the year. But he’s also not in the top 40 in salary for FBS college football coaches. It’s the rare example in college football of a coach who has the accolades but not the pay to go along with them.

So perhaps Petersen isn’t all about the money. Or maybe he is, but won’t leave until he would become the highest paid coach in college football, not just one of them.

The point of all this speculation is that we simply don’t know what Petersen’s true rationale is for staying at Boise State. We can come up with fairly reasonable theories about how he is a West Coast man and wouldn’t leave for any Eastern school, or how his son’s medical condition (he was diagnosed with cancer in 1999 but has since been cured) keeps the Petersen family loyal to the city of Boise.

But when it really comes down to it, only Chris Petersen knows where he wants to be and when (or how long) he wants to be there.

Petersen has continued to build something at Boise State that was beginning to take shape before he became head coach in 2005. With two BCS bowl victories since 2007, an 88-10 overall record and six consecutive seasons in the year end Top 25 polls, Petersen has picked the program up by the bootstraps and turned it in to a perennial contender.

As good of a coach as he may be, the kind of legacy that he would be able to have at a school like USC or Arkansas would have a hard time matching up to what he has done at Boise State.

One has to wonder if Petersen will ever look for a change in scenery. With the new College Football Playoff beginning next season, a new challenge will face every coach in the country. Specific to Petersen, Boise State will no longer be competing for a berth in a BCS bowl, but rather a spot in the four-team playoff.

Since one team from the “Group of Five” is automatically guaranteed a spot in one of the six most prestigious bowl games in the new system, the Broncos will have the opportunity to play in the Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl, or Chic-fil-A Peach Bowl every year when those bowls are not part of the playoff bracket.

Suddenly, the only things Boise State doesn’t have are the week-to-week competition that some other conferences have and the four and five-star recruits. But Petersen has always done more with less since he’s been in Boise.

Seems like a pretty good place to stay.

So will Petersen really end his career at Boise State?

If we’re being honest, we can only speculate about that as well. But based on everything we have at our expense to do so, it sure looks as if he will.