What big-name team could complete Boise State's 2011 schedule?

University of Michigan (not Michigan State) plays in the Big House. Sorry, but as a part-time Michigan fan (when the Broncos aren’t on or the Michigan outcome doesn’t affect the Broncos in a bad way,) I can’t let people mistake the Wolverines for the lowly ugly green-clad Spartans. Yuck!

There is no way that they would invite Coach Pete to watch practice if they were discussing playing each other the next year. Oklahoma St makes more sense, I just don’t see an SEC team happening, they have nothing to gain by playing us.

I grew up in Idaho, but now i live in Tennessee. SEC fans are the worst in the world! They are obnoxious, all of them. But Tennessee and Alabama fans might be the worst. First of all, SEC fans dress up like they’re going to golf when they go to football games. Attire consists of polo shirts, Khaki’s, Boat shoes, and dresses. And all the guys, I’m pretty sure, are required to look like clones of each other with their Bama Boy hair cuts, which consist of swooping their bangs to the side across their foreheads. They all have this mental delusion where they honestly believe that some breed of super-humans play football in the SEC that makes every other conference look like Pop-Warner football. And when they find out that I’m a Boise State fan, they give me NO respect. They all just think think we’re a “high-school program” that has no shot at ever beating an SEC opponent, because that’s “real football”. I would love nothing more than to schedule Alabama and go down there and Roll some freaking Tide right off that field. It would be so awesome to beat Alabama!!!! I say we do it twice in two years. Once in this year’s Title game, and one more at their place the following year to rub their faces in the dirt………….no actually…..if we can beat them in the Title game, they should have to come crawling up to the Blue Turf

SCHEDULE ALABAMA PLEASE!!!!

I know it’s been hard scheduling “respectable” teams (relative term) to play the Broncos, but consider some of BSU’s conditions. The “fair market value” that Bleymaier is asking for the team, the 1-and-1 series, etc. I’m not sure he’s in the greatest negotiating position to match up said teams with the Broncos. I think ADs are still in that mindset of “what good does it do us to schedule a team like this?” Bleymaier may have to adopt the “anyone anytime anywhere” attitude, like Fresno St. only with the actual talent to beat anyone anytime anywhere.

I voted Oklahoma. While I agree that Oklahoma is unlikely since they invited coach Pete to campus a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but notice that they are the only ones on that list that would have any real desire to play us. Everyone else would treat playing us as another game, but Oklahoma would have the revenge factor in the players blood and the media storyline, which of course would be HUGE! I could just see the coaches putting up bulletin board material all week and replaying the ending to that one game we played them in. Want Boise State to be part of a GameDay national broadcast (ESPN/ABC), that would certainly do it.

Since the MAC has cancelled and moved the BSU games year after year—-let’smove it from 9/17.

Options:

1. Move Toledo to 9/3 to open 9/17 as a possible date for a big game opponent.

2. Or make the WAC send someone else to Toledo, replace it with a MAC opponent on 9/3.

3. Or make the WAC send someone else to Toledo, play the big game on 9/17, and add a 1AA home game. This gives us the big payday, and another home payday.

My vote—option three. Big game, big payday, plus another home game, plus no roadtrip to Toledo. I know that no one likes 1AAs, but a tune up is better than visiting a MAC school. And if it allows the big game to be on 9/17, this would be a huge win.

Shall we call Gene? :)

Is someone going to figure out what big game opponents are available on 9/17? In Cowboy stadium please?

To make Fresno trade with us?

Bully the WAC and take what is rightfully ours!

Actually, Michigan is not a bad choice – and I think they’d give it serious consideration. They have a new AD who has expressed a desire to once again schedule top-shelf non-conference opponents. And with Michigan fielding almost 75% underclassman & walk-ons last year, and now having put together back-to-back top-10 recruiting classes that meet deficit needs, they should easily field a top-10 caliber team in 2010 that is loaded with talented upperclassmen, something they haven’t had since Lloyd Carr left.

The only drawback I see is that in week 2 they play Notre Dame in a first-ever game under the lights at the Big House. The hype of that game, plus the difficulty (one can assume) of that opponent, might preclude them from scheduling back-to-back BCS-caliber teams. But I seriously see them taking a page from the decade past when they would schedule perennial top-10 teams in the non-conference schedule (ala Miami, Florida State, etc.). As the Broncos are discovering, one can not become an elite program – or (as Michigan is discovering) remain an elite program – without playing elite competition.