Obviously Bronco fans were not expecting a Las Vegas Bowl trip at the end of this season, except for those Bronco fans who have a strange love of Max Hall musk. So where does this team rank among the all-time Boise State teams? If the Broncos win, are we talking about the best team ever?
I explore this topic after the jump, and I open it up to your feedback, too. Which team is the best Bronco team in history? Does a Las Vegas Bowl blowout cement the 2010 Broncos' legacy? Let's discuss.
The record does not make the team ... psych?
Your feelings on this will probably decide where you fall on this All-Time Boise State debate. Do you have to be undefeated to qualify as an all-time Bronco team? Or is there more to the conversation than record alone?
If you're a perfectionist, then you pretty much wrote this year off after the Nevada game. And that would be fair enough. Great teams, you could argue, find a way to win.
Or you could say that great teams are more about the talent on the field and not necessarily the results.
Me? I'm not a perfectionist. Football is too fluky to judge on a micro level of individual stats (wins and losses, or yards, turnovers, touchdowns, for that matter). I believe that great teams are defined more in how they perform against obviously mediocre teams than in how they perform against other great teams. And remember that New Mexico State game? Man oh man.
The best teams in Boise State history, more or less
When we discuss the best teams in Bronco history (which we do just about every year here, it seems like), these are the ones that come up the most often:
- 1980 Boise State D-IAA national champions
- 2003 Boise State Fort Worth Bowl champions
- 2006 Boise State Fiesta Bowl champions
- 2008 Boise State Poinsettia Bowl champions
- 2009 Boise State Fiesta Bowl champions
- 2010 Boise State Las Vegas Bowl
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So how would you rank them?
I'm a fan of the 2006 team, which kills me a little inside since it involved large parts of Jared Zabransky (I am not a Zabransky apologist, in case that wasn't painfully clear). They were talented, unified, smart, hard-working, need I go on?
I want to put the 2010 team right up there with the 2006 team and my only reason for not doing so is stupid. The 2006 team found a way to win every game. The 2010 team? Well, in theory they found a way to win every game, too. The Bronco defense forced a field goal in the fourth quarter when they had to. The offense put the ball inside the 10 with seconds left.
So I need another week-to-10 days to think about it. Let me know what you think in the comments.