Boise State football program found blueprint for success
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
Widely circulated legend has it that since Boise State's first lake-blue AstroTurf was installed, water fowl by the hundreds have dived to their deaths on the Broncos' football field, mistaking it for part of the adjacent Boise River.
"I'll neither confirm or deny it," says Gene Bleymaier, the school's athletic director, with a conspiratorial wink.
What he will gladly tell you — tongue firmly in cheek — as the Broncos prepare to welcome the University of Hawai'i's first visit Saturday, is the unorthodox field, "makes it harder for visiting teams to play. It disorients them. It makes it hard for them to run without falling down. It makes it ..."
For 17 years now, "Blue," as the Broncos players and fans have come to refer to 30,000-seat Bronco Stadium, has given Boise State a conversation piece to hang its helmet on and a unique home-field environment to rally around, even if some of the enduring tales that have grown up around it are dubious.
Believing that even a successful football team — 11 winning seasons in the last 15 years — lost amid the Mountain Time Zone needed some help if it was ever to get noticed, Bleymaier found his gimmick when Boise State decided to change its turf in 1986.
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| Since installing a blue turf at its stadium 17 years ago, Boise State has won 74 home games.
Max Corbet • Boise State University |
Southwest Recreational Industries Inc. — which produces AstroTurf and AstroPlay surfaces and had never fielded an order for anything but green — had to be convinced, but finally came around.
Now, two renovations later, the latest putting in AstroPlay (the same artificial, grass-like surface UH played on at Texas-El Paso two weeks ago) this summer for $648,000, Boise State's field remains the only one among more than 3,000 Astro surfaces worldwide in blue.
"We've gotten a bunch of publicity out of having it that way, which was part of the deal," Bleymaier acknowledges." It has gotten us noticed."
Clearly, the Broncos prize their exclusivity, even if they have tired of the "smurf turf' and "tidy bowl" punch lines.
They believe blue is one more way to jar a visiting team's focus and reinforce their own home-field edge. How much the color scheme really has to do with it is anybody's guess, but Boise State has won 21 of its last 22 home games. Since going to blue, it has won 74 of its home games in climbing the competitive ladder from the Big Sky Conference to the Big West and, last year, the Western Athletic Conference.
And, the school claims, no water fowl have been harmed in the process. "I've seen a lot of geese wandering around on the field," said BSU spokesman Max Corbet. "But in 17 years, I've never seen them have to dig a bird out of it."
