Presented by THE JAMES.
This Day In Sports…December 30, 1999, 25 years ago today:
Boise State plays its first Division I-A bowl game ever—at home in Bronco Stadium—beating Louisville 34-31 in the Humanitarian Bowl. The Broncos were urged on in 25-degree weather by a crowd of 29,283, considered at the time to be the loudest since the legendary Division I-AA playoff win over Grambling in 1980. The throng was treated to a thriller that featured eight lead changes and the emergence of a new bell cow in the Boise State backfield.
Starting tailback Gavin Reed was injured early in the game, and the Broncos turned to redshirt freshman Brock Forsey, who had rushed for only 313 yards all season to that point. Forsey, a redshirt freshman walk-on from Centennial High, racked up 152 yards on the ground against the Cardinals and totaled a then-school record 269 yards in all-purpose yards to take away MVP honors. Today, Forsey is fourth on Boise State’s career rushing list behind Ashton Jeanty, Cedric Minter and Ian Johnson.
Quarterback Bart Hendricks got serious national notice for the first time after throwing for 335 yards and a touchdown and scoring another TD on the ground. Midway through the season, Boise State had absorbed a lackluster 17-10 loss at North Texas that left it with a 4-3 record, and coach Dirk Koetter made some offensive changes. Koetter rolled the dice and turned Hendricks loose—and the junior played freely from there on out to lead the Broncos on a five-game winning streak that saw them average 47.6 points going into the H-Bowl. Boise State finished the season 10-3, launching an era that resulted in 17 10-win seasons in 21 years.
This game was the mountaintop for a collection of Boise State seniors who had debuted in 1996 and had completed an arduous journey. Among them were Bryan Johnson, who began as a tight end and finished as a linebacker before going on to play fullback in the NFL, cornerback Ross Farris, then the pride of Glenns Ferry, safety Marcel Yates, who would later serve as Boise State’s defensive coordinator, and Bryan Harsin, a backup quarterback out of Capital High who would go on to become the Broncos’ head coach.
As freshmen, they had endured a 2-10 season, the worst in school history, while their coach was away from the program battling cancer. At the end of the year, Pokey Allen died. Another coach came on in 1997, but Houston Nutt left after only one season. Koetter arrived in 1998, and fortunes changed for the group. It was able to lay claim to Boise State’s first winning season as a Division I-A (FBS) school, the Broncos’ first FBS conference championship, and finally, that longed-for first bowl victory.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra and anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK. He also served as color commentator on KTVB’s telecasts of Boise State football for 14 seasons.)
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