As Life of Party, Boise St. Is Tired

Dramatic Ending of Last Season Was Just the Beginning

Former Boise State quarterback Jared Zabransky accepts the award for best play at the ESPYs. After the Fiesta Bowl victory, the Broncos became media darlings. (Chris Carlson - AP)

When Tim Socha joined Boise State football players for their first winter workout, the school's strength coach saw three players wearing Fiesta Bowl shirts from their victory over Oklahoma earlier that month. At that moment, Socha banned Fiesta Bowl apparel from all workouts, abruptly establishing the tenor for the 2007 season, then still nine months away.

"Wear it only with your girlfriend," Socha told players. "It is in the past."

In winning a game for the ages, Boise State went from a successful blue-collar program popular in the Northwest to the nation's iconic underdog with an enhanced Q rating. But to prepare for life after the Fiesta Bowl, the team has taken steps to distance itself from that fame, even as much of the community continues to bask in what has been an unprecedented seven-month celebration.

Chris Petersen, Boise State's second-year head coach, embraces many of the residual effects of winning one of the most entertaining games in college football history, a 43-42 triumph that included a hook-and-lateral to force overtime and a Statue of Liberty play on the winning two-point conversion. Like many of his players, though, Petersen has grown tired of rehashing the subject, opening a recent news conference by saying, "Who's got non-Fiesta Bowl questions?"

"It is such a fine line because we want everyone to talk about Boise State," Petersen said in a telephone interview. "But coaches and players, we want to move forward, and we feel we have. It is really amazing, and humorous, that they are still talking about it."

On Jan. 3, two days after the Fiesta Bowl, scores of fans waited hours outside an apparel store to meet a late-arriving delivery of 120 boxes of merchandise. Fans applauded and took pictures with the UPS employee. And new marketing opportunities continue to emerge, which is a promotional blessing and a potential distraction for a team hoping to win a sixth straight Western Athletic Conference title.

Exposure has come from all avenues for the only Division I-A team to finish last season undefeated. The image of former quarterback Jared Zabransky glossed the cover of a popular college football video game, the team won two ESPY awards and Nike moved to renegotiate its sponsorship deal with the school.

The Boise State Bookstore's clothing sales soared, up 73 percent this past year. Retailers sold 12,000 copies of the highlight DVD of the 2006 season, four times the number sold any other season. The Idaho Statesman prepared to release a book later this month, and filmmakers finished a documentary, "Out of the Blue," that will air on an ESPN network in the coming weeks.

If that wasn't enough, talk of a feature movie got the mountain community so enthused that a woman wrote a letter to the Idaho Statesman demanding that George Clooney not play a role. Michael Hoffman, a 24-year veteran of the film industry who directed the documentary and is pursuing the movie concept, said movie-related discussions are in the early stages, but Hollywood has expressed interest.

"I think they are drawn to the small-town nature of it, the family values of it, the underdog aspect of it," said Hoffman, Boise State's first Rhodes Scholar who added that the Broncos' journey offers such hard-to-believe story lines, the script "needs to be based on a true story because otherwise no one would believe it."

With another season on the horizon, players won't get wrapped up in reflecting on the past. When asked about offseason celebrations, cornerback Kyle Wilson said: "No celebration. Working hard. I didn't dwell on it myself; I'm not living a dream since then or anything."

Travis Hawkes, the owner of the Blue & Orange Store, said: "It's definitely two different deals. The players don't want to talk about it. The community is still in celebration mode."