Here is another great Bronco article.

This is from our friends to the Northwest. Here is the link.

Here’s a thought: Instead of a Fiesta, give Boise a Rose

JOHN MCGRATH; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Before I make the case why the Rose Bowl needs Boise State more than Boise State needs the Rose Bowl, let me point out that I’ve got no dog in this hunt.

I didn’t attend Boise State. None of my friends or relatives went to school there, either.

I once met a Boise State student – Coby Karl, son of former SuperSonics coach George Karl – but we didn’t discuss college, as Coby happened to be sitting on his dad’s lap at the time. The Sonics had just beaten Phoenix in a 1993 playoff game. After listening to his father answer questions from reporters for several minutes, Coby finally had heard enough.

“Dad,” he asked, “can we go home and play catch now?”

Thirteen years later, the kid is a star guard for Boise State’s basketball team.

Go Broncos.

It’s not that I’m a closet Boise State fan. I mean, if I’m rooting for a school that’s 12-0 – on its way to a New Year’s bowl – I’m telling it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere.

What I am is a fan of the Rose Bowl, or at least what the Rose Bowl once was: A showdown between the best football team on the West Coast against the best football team from the Midwest.

Had the traditional bowl system not been “repaired” by the Bowl Championship Series, the Rose Bowl would’ve been positioned to hold the national championship contest between No. 1 Ohio State and the presumptive challenger, Southern California.

But the Buckeyes are booked for a Jan. 8 date in Glendale, Ariz., and the Trojans need only beat UCLA to join them.

The good news for the Little Old Granddaddy from Pasadena is that it’s the Rose Bowl’s turn to choose the best of the rest. Projections are pointing to Big Ten Conference runner-up Michigan against Oklahoma (if the Sooners get past Nebraska in the Big 12 title game next weekend), or Michigan against Louisiana State.

Does Michigan-Oklahoma fire you up? Does Michigan-LSU?

These are big-time teams from big-time conferences, but nothing about either scenario screams “New Year’s Day in Pasadena!” Nothing about either scenario even whispers it.

So here’s an off-the-wall projection:

Michigan against Boise State.

Granted, Boise State’s undefeated season – it included a victory over Sacramento State – was achieved not so much against the ranks of college football’s “Who’s Who” than college football’s “Who’s That?” To call the Broncos schedule soft is like saying Paula Abdul was not born to be a homicide detective.

On the other hand, Boise State trounced Oregon State, the only opponent it faced from a league affiliated with the BCS. And it was the Beavers who were responsible for USC’s first regular-season defeat since grade-school desks were built with ink wells.

Boise State is bound for a BCS bowl, most likely the Fiesta Bowl, and giddy Broncos fans will show up in Arizona on planes detoured through a layover on Cloud Nine. But the Broncos belong in the Rose Bowl, an event steeped in the premise of a protagonist based in the West.

There are 39 players from California on Boise State’s roster, 20 from Idaho, five from Oregon, three from Washington. We can debate whether the Broncos deserve to be ranked among the top 10 teams in the country, but there’s no doubt they are the second-best in the West, behind USC. And barring an epic upset next weekend, USC looks like it’ll be preoccupied during the New Year’s Day prelude to the most consequential bowl.

Before champions from the Big Ten and what is now the Pacific-10 Conference became annual postseason foes in the wake of World War II, the Rose Bowl was built around a host from the West Coast. Once in a while, two teams represented the West. For instance, Mare Island, assembled from the Navy base in San Francisco, beat Camp Lewis (known these days as Fort Lewis) in the 1918 Rose Bowl.

Only twice has the Rose Bowl veered from the status quo: In 2002, the BCS arranged for Miami to take on Nebraska (the Hurricanes won 37-14). In 2005, Texas, behind the outrageously talented Vince Young, edged Michigan in a 38-37 thriller.

This just in: Vince Young doesn’t play quarterback for Oklahoma, and he doesn’t play quarterback for LSU. So why not arrange a West Coast foe for Michigan? Isn’t 90 years of tradition worth preserving?

The Rose Bowl committee, which ought to be more vigilant than any of us about sustaining tradition, won’t buy it. Ever haughty, Rose Bowl executives look at Boise State as a newcomer unfit to attend college football’s oldest postseason party.

A team representing the Western Athletic Conference? What next, a co-champion from a junior college circuit?

And there’s the Boise State heritage: Until the Broncos ran the table on a slate of inconsequential opponents, they were famous as the team that played its home games on a blue field – a concession to birds in the Boise area prone to mistake green football fields for landing pads.

Boise State doesn’t cut it, which means that Michigan probably will face either Oklahoma or LSU in the Rose Bowl.

I’ll watch Oklahoma-Michigan, as long as it doesn’t conflict with another game’s fantastic finish. And I might even tune into Michigan-LSU for a minute or two.

But I’d make it a point to camp in front of the TV for Michigan-Boise State, a classic match-up between the blue bloods from the Big Ten and the mid-major outcasts from the blue field – the big-timers used to hearing “The Victors” blared for 105,000 fawning spectators in Ann Arbor against the guys whose pulses race to, uh, whatever song the BSU band plays for them before kickoff.

All I know is that they’re from the West, they’re 12-0, and they’d give me the only reason I can think of to care about the Rose Bowl.

Go Broncos.