By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Through more than a decade of heavy-handed dominance in the 1970s and '80s, the sight of Brigham Young University's powder blue uniforms and championship swagger made the University of Hawai'i and its fans see red.

When then-head coach Bob Wagner and UH finally managed to solve the BYU puzzle, and just after things started to get more interesting, the Cougars up and left the Western Athletic Conference.

Now, their role as designated bully and conference standard-setter has been assumed by ... Boise State.

For now it is the Broncos that have not only UH, Friday's ESPN2 opponent, but the rest of the WAC singing, well, the blues.

Laugh at their "smurf turf" if you like. Make jokes about their state's most-noted crop, if you must. But around the WAC, there is nothing funny nor small potatoes about the way the 18th-ranked Broncos have suddenly come to rule the conference.

With back-to-back unbeaten conference championship seasons and 22 consecutive conference victories, Boise State's mastery recalls the period (1982-85) when BYU reeled off a conference-record 25 consecutive WAC wins.

The way the Broncos have been able to reload, not rebuild, reminds of a time when BYU seemed to have a football factory humming at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. What Dan Hawkins has done since stepping up from an assistant at Boise State draws comparisons to the early LaVell Edwards years in Provo, Utah.

BYU had the more "name" quarterbacks and eye-popping statistics, but Boise State has not lacked for performance at the position.

Just when it seemed UH and Fresno State would fight over the right to rule the post-breakaway WAC, along came expansion addition Boise State in 2001 to rudely upstage everything. Since then, it has won all three conference meetings over UH by a combined 131-80 and all four from the Bulldogs by 166-89.

Fresno State's Pat Hill could have been the spokesman for the rest of the WAC after Saturday's 33-16 loss when he told the Fresno Bee: "Boise State is the class of this conference. They're definitely a team we have to catch — and we're not there yet."

UH knows this better than most. After a 34-19 non-conference victory over Boise State in 1999, head coach June Jones' first year, the UH-BSU series has turned decidedly in the Broncos' favor in the WAC.

Boise State knocked Fresno State from the role of the WAC's Bowl Championship Series Buster in 2001 and, now, at 7-0 (4-0 WAC), is playing that part itself and taking it beyond what the Bulldogs ever have.

To paraphrase noted WAC football follower Yogi Berra, say it isn't, deja blue all over again.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.