When the average college football
fan hears the term “The Blue” in regards to
Boise
State
football, the glaringly obvious blue turf is the first and (likely) only thing
that comes to mind. To the hard core
fans that make up Bronco Nation however, “The Blue” (turf) isn’t the
defining characteristic of our program at all, it’s just one of the many
things we that we love about our school. To
this member of Bronco Nation, “The Blue” has an entirely different meaning. It
has a meaning that is so excessively overused by the coaches, players, and
writers in college football today that it is all but lost on the average fan of
your average program. That meaning
is blue collar. During a sustained
run of success, like the one our program is currently experiencing, I think
it’s important that we take the time to remember what it is that got us where
we are today and to reinforce those ideals so that they don’t become lost in
the transition. In other words, we
need to remember “The Blue” that drives us.
Over the past decade
Boise
State
football has distinguished itself as one of the premier programs in the FBS and
it has done so with less “talent”, a smaller budget, and a distinct lack of
palm trees with which to lure in new recruits. You see,
Boise
State
football, the city of
Boise
, and the state of
Idaho
don’t get things done with large amounts of cash or flashy cars and sunny
beaches. People in this neck of the
woods prefer hard work as a means of achieving their goal. They
prefer to be told that they can’t accomplish something and then prove those
naysayers wrong… and
Boise
State
football has been no exception.
Of course we owe a lot of our blue collar success to our long line of
fantastic coaches as well as our school’s outstanding leadership for putting
the team in a position to be as successful as they have. But
in the end most of us find it easiest to relate to the players. Ian Johnson is
probably the most famous Bronco ever to grace the blue turf in the eyes of the
nation but, only as members of the Bronco faithful do we know that he
accomplished that feat through hard work and perseverance and not a high profile
wedding proposal. Yes, it is safe to say that Ian Johnson knows what “The
Blue” really means. As great as
Ian Johnson has been for
Boise
State
football though, if one were to crown a solitary blue collar king of
Boise
State
football… I would claim that one would have to look no further than certain
inside linebacker named Korey Hall.
Korey Hall never gave an interview on ESPN during his time at
Boise
State
. Nor did he get invited to be on
Good Morning America in the days following the Bronco’s epic victory over
Oklahoma
in the 2007 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. What
he did do though was lead the team in tackles both his junior and senior
seasons. He did become a 3 time
first team All-WAC player as well as a second team Sporting News All-American
during his senior year. He was also
a 2006 team captain, the same year he led the nation in interceptions by a
linebacker, but you’d never hear him say any of it. Unless
of course you asked him and even then it wasn’t as if he was able to
comfortably discuss his own successes. It
just so happened however that I was lucky enough to find that out for myself
during a short interview that took place a few days after the 42-14 blowout of
the Oregon State Beavers in 2006.
Now if you were one that followed the Bronco teams during Korey’s
tenure closely (2002-2006), you kind of got the sense that he was the no
nonsense type. He wasn’t about
flash or style per se; he was about getting the job done and doing that the best
way he knew how. As a Bronco and
therefore a person who can admire that sort of work ethic, the first thing I
wanted to know when I sat down with him was who he had learned it from. Who
was his mentor when he arrived at
Boise
State
? “Andy Avalos” he replied. “I
learned a lot from him about doing the right stuff on and off the field. He
was a real academic (type) football player” he continued. “He
was a real tough guy. I still talk to him quite a bit.” Most
of us probably remember Andy Avalos as an emotional leader on defense and from
his famous 92 yard interception return for a touchdown in the 2004 Liberty Bowl.
Andy was another true
“undersized”, overachieving blue collar talent and is now working as a
Graduate Assistant with Dan Hawkins at the
University
of
Colorado
.
Like Andy Avalos, Hall was considered “undersized” and his forty
times where “unimpressive” in terms of what most scouts would consider great
at the D1 level. But that didn’t
hold him back and his team leading six interceptions as a senior lend credence
to that statement. “What gives you
your edge?” I asked. “What makes
you stand out as a player?” He
paused for a few moments and I began to get the feeling that he’d never even
thought of himself as a standout player. “That’s
a tough question.” He conceded. “I
try to watch a ton of film and study the game more. You know--have it narrowed
down to a couple of plays that they might run.
I’m not necessarily a lot bigger or better than a lot of the (line)
backers in the WAC so watching a lot of film is my edge I guess.” NFL Scout’s translation: This guy has incredible instincts.
I got the idea that Korey was in uncomfortable territory at this point,
but I wanted see if I couldn’t get another uncomfortable question out of the
way before moving on. “What is the
greatest football compliment you’ve ever received?” I
prodded. He was literally speechless
for a few moments. He had nothing and I immediately felt bad for even going
there, that’s how humble this guy was. And
in the end all I got in response was exactly what you’d expect from the type
of player recruited to
Boise
State
. “You know, I don’t really read
the papers ever. So I don’t hear a lot of that stuff”.
Having reached a dead end so to speak with my previous question I backed
off the personal accolades. “So
what about
Boise
State
football, it’s becoming pretty big. It’s
safe to say that as a program, you guys have arrived on the national scene. What
has been the hardest adjustment you’ve had to make in terms of being in the
spotlight so to speak?” He
chuckled “If you go out somewhere, you can’t really act like a jackass. People
just have their eye on you more, it’s not like you’re just a regular person.
Like if I was going to go out after
a game or something and get in trouble. It’d
be in the Statesman the next day.” We
both laughed again at that one.
The interview went on for a little while longer and I was ultimately able
to ask all the dorky fan questions I could come up with, but I think the thing
that stood out the most to me during my time with Korey was how utterly sincere
he was. I’d never met the guy before that day and there I was sitting on the
couch in his living room asking him questions about his football career, trying
to hide the fact that he was probably my favorite player ever at
Boise
State
. And there he was answering my
questions as humbly and honestly as he could. I
ended up meeting his roommate that day and his mother as she stopped by to make
sure he had all the groceries he needed. His
mother took the time to thank me for coming to interview him for crying out
loud. It runs in the family I guess?
That’s the type of people we are
blessed to be around as members of Bronco Nation and to me that is what “The
Blue” is really all about. It’s humble; it’s hard working, its setting
goals and achieving them… It’s about playing out of your mind, bigger than
your stature, and beyond the expectations.
It is my sincere hope that as a
community, a school, and supporters of this truly great football program we are
able to remember where we came from. That
we never get too big for our britches. I hope we are able to stay humble and
never act as though we’re outgrowing certain things, even if in our hearts we
know that we are. Good things will
come if we stay true to what got us here. In times like these we need to focus on
the little things, we need to study our “game film”, whatever that may mean
for us as individuals. And most
importantly we need to always respect “The Blue”.
“Alright
this is the last one I have for you. What would you want people to remember most
about you after you leave here (
Boise
State
)?” I asked. “Probably just that
I played hard. That I was a tough
player,” he concluded.
Mission
accomplished Sir.