For the casual football fan whose experience with the college game may extend no farther than catching an occasional game with his buddies at the bar, Boise State’s Broncos football team can cause quite a bit of consternation. As members of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), they first captured the attention of much of the nation in the 2006-07 campaign. That season saw the Broncos go undefeated with 13 wins, and then beat the mighty Oklahoma Sooners in the Fiesta Bowl game. For the last several seasons, the Broncos have remained one of the best – and perhaps underrated – teams in the country. Even though they managed another undefeated 14 victory season in 2009, they were never seriously considered for title contention. Oddly enough, though, for most casual fans the Boise State football’s team has not been the real attention-getter – it has been the fact that they play on a blue field!
How to get a blue field
Bronco Stadium remains a curiosity in college sports, as it is the only one of its kind in the sport. The color has its origins in the Stadium turf renovation that occurred two and a half decades ago. When the school discovered that it would cost $750,000 to lay down a new layer of Astroturf, they immediately looked for way in which that investment could pay some sort of dividend for the school. In the end, the decision was made to make the field look completely different than it had looked before the renovation, and the best way to gain some notoriety for the program was to make the field a unique color. Ultimately, the choice of colors to use came down to one of the two colors on the team’s uniform- either orange or blue. After deciding that the orange would be a little too off-putting, the blue Astroturf design as chosen, and thus was born a special tradition in college football.
Is there an advantage?
Of course, it was only natural that there would be much speculation over the course of the next two and a half decades that perhaps the blue field, when seen against the blue of the Boise State players’ uniforms, would serve to camouflage the Broncos players and force opponents to play at a disadvantage. Comments to that effect were, however, quickly dismissed in light of the fact that many colleges and professional teams have worn green uniforms that have been similar in color to the grass on which they played, without serious suggestions that they were somehow invisible to their opponents due to the blending of the colors. One coach of another squad was so adamant that the blue field provided no real advantage to the Broncos that he is famously quoted as saying that the real disadvantage his team had in facing the Boise State team came from the fact that the players on those Broncos units had so much talent.
Alone forevermore
Nevertheless, Boise State is fated to be the sole college team with a football field of blue. The NCAA has made any other such designs illegal, though they still allow the Broncos to retain their field color for as long as they have Bronco Stadium intact.
For the Boise State Broncos, playing on blue turf has become a habit that will undoubtedly remain a part of the team’s attraction far into the future.
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