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This Day In Sports…December 6, 2014, 10 years ago today:

Boise State wins its first outright conference title in five years and earns the Group of Five’s automatic berth in the New Year’s Six bowl games by beating Fresno State 28-14 in the Mountain West championship game at Albertsons Stadium. It was the first year of the new College Football Playoff era after the end of the old BCS system, and the Broncos made some more history. Boise State was playing for a New Year’s Six Bowl that night—it would be the Fiesta Bowl. This year, it would be an entirely different kind of Fiesta Bowl in the CFP.

Boise State’s Grant Hedrick was the game’s offensive MVP. The senior quarterback was a headache for the Bulldogs, rushing for 81 yards and two touchdowns on just nine carries. Both TDs were dandies, the first one featuring the fake of the year on an option for a 20-yard score, and the second coming when Hedrick read a Fresno State blitz and simply ran a keeper around the right side for a 21-yard touchdown.

There were three defensive moments in particular that kept Fresno State at bay. The most obvious was Tanner Vallejo’s 63-yard interception return for a touchdown that gave Boise State a 14-0 lead (and gave Vallejo defensive MVP honors). Two other interceptions were also key. Donte Deayon stopped a Bulldog drive with a pick in the end zone in the first quarter, and Beau Martin’s interception on Fresno State’s last possession was eminently fitting for a senior defensive end who began his career as a walk-on.  

The road to the New Year’s Six bowls was easier this year for Boise State than it was for the two BCS bowls, although nobody inside the Bleymaier Football Center shared that sentiment. In 2006 the major bowl talk started in late September, and in 2009 there was season-long anticipation of a BCS bowl. In each of those years, though, the Broncos were ranked in the top 10, and that’s where they had to be to get in. 

Under the new CFP structure, Boise State had to be the top-ranked team among the Group of Five conferences. The Broncos were No. 20 this time, but for a team that many had written off after a bad September loss to Air Force, the team’s eight-game winning streak and ascension to the Fiesta Bowl in Bryan Harsin’s first season as coach was sayin’ something.

(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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