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This Day In Sports…October 18, 1999, 25 years ago today:
The Western Athletic Conference extends invitations to Boise State and Louisiana Tech to join the conference effective with the 2001 football season. It would be the final nail in the coffin for football as a sponsored sport in the Big West. Nevada had been invited to the WAC four months earlier, and Boise State’s departure would leave only five football-playing schools in the Big West. Idaho, New Mexico State, North Texas and Arkansas State would land in the Sun Belt Conference, while Utah State decided to make a go of it as an independent.
The WAC had been cobbling things back together a year after the eight Mountain West mutineers (Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah and Wyoming) announced they were forming a new conference. For the Broncos, the move to the WAC was validation for the years they had been working on growing their fan base and their infrastructure—most noticeably the expansion of Bronco Stadium to a capacity of 30,000 with the addition of the southwest and southeast corners.
It was just coincidence, but the WAC announcement came at a time when many consider Boise State’s golden era to have begun. The Broncos had just taken a painful 17-10 loss at North Texas, dropping them to 3-4 for the season. It was then that coach Dirk Koetter turned quarterback Bart Hendricks loose, and five days after the WAC invite, Boise State stunned Nevada 52-17 on the blue turf. The Broncos would not lose again in 1999, finishing 10-3 with a Big West championship and their first bowl victory—34-31 over Louisville in the Humanitarian Bowl.
Boise State was happy in the WAC at the outset. But Broncos football was wildly successful in the conference, winning a championship in their second year (the first of five in a row). By early 2004, with the Mountain West looking to expand, Boise State threw its hat in the ring. The Broncos were competing with TCU, which was then in Conference USA. The Horned Frogs won the beauty contest and joined the Mountain West in 2005, six years before Boise State. The two programs shared quarters for just one season, in 2011, before TCU jumped to the Big 12.
Boise State spent 10 years in the WAC and went an astounding 75-5 in conference play with eight league titles. The Broncos are entering their 14th season in the Mountain West and have one more to go before joining the Pac-12 in 2026. The Pac-12 still needs one more football-playing school to get rebooted, but it has put that search on the back-burner for now while it prepares to negotiate its media rights deal.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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