On a Wednesday afternoon just before Christmas, many Americans will be working, either in offices or in preparation for their holiday feasts and celebrations.
The Northern Illinois Huskies and Boise State Broncos will be working on a field in San Diego, thrown together in a battle of two of college football’s best little-guy strivers and success stories over the past several seasons. NIU and Boise State were not at their best this season, but they had reason to struggle. A victory in this game will give the winner the right to feel very good about what it has achieved.
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One could spend at least a thousand words if not more, carefully detailing all the accomplishments of these two programs over the past decade. Their bodies of work would deserve such treatment; an extended examination of NIU’s and BSU’s legacies would not be out of proportion with what they have done to reshape college football at the Group of Five level.
Boise State became a BCS trailblazer in the Western Athletic Conference, as seen in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. NIU did the same in the Mid-American Conference, making the MAC’s first BCS appearance in the 2013 Orange Bowl. Boise State unfurled seven straight seasons with at least 10 wins from 2006 through 2012. NIU uncorked five straight 10-win seasons from 2010 through 2014.
Boise State, under former coach Chris Petersen, didn’t lose a home game for nearly six whole seasons. From 2006 through 2010, the Broncos didn’t drop a game on Smurf Turf. TCU and Gary Patterson (with a ballsy, go-for-broke, endgame 2-point conversion) improbably snapped the run in 2011.
Northern Illinois, under three coaches — Jerry Kill, Dave Doeren, and Rod Carey — went nearly six whole seasons without losing a game in November. The Huskies lost to Central Michigan — the reigning MAC powerhouse of the time — on Nov. 27, 2009. They didn’t lose another game in November until Nov. 24 against Ohio. For five whole seasons (2010 through 2014), the Huskies were untouched and unconquered in college football’s climactic month. That they attained such a distinction under three coaches makes their success that much more the product of a system and a way of being, carried through many transitions.
Boise State lost only three games in a four-year span from 2008 through 2011.
Northern Illinois has won six straight MAC West Division championships.
Both schools won their conferences last season with 11-2 records heading into the bowl games. Boise State did so under Bryan Harsin, Petersen’s successor. The Broncos joined NIU as a program which could win under more than one man. They also showed they could win the Fiesta Bowl under more than one man when they took down Arizona in suburban Phoenix.
The journeys made by Boise State and Northern Illinois over the past several years amount to an old song and dance: Anything you can do I can do better. I can do anything better than you.
The Broncos and Huskies have demonstrated consistency. They’ve exhibited staying power. They’ve reached the big stage. They’ve broken new ground in their own histories and in the histories of their conferences (the WAC now being defunct in football). These programs have traveled parallel paths on several levels.
Therefore, how fascinating it is that Boise State and NIU enter this game having taken similar roads to San Diego for the Poinsettia Bowl.
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Both the Broncos and Huskies watched their starting quarterbacks go down with injuries this season. Ryan Finley and Drew Hare gave way to Brett Rypien and Ryan Graham. NIU did well enough to win its division in the MAC and increase its streak of consecutive MAC Championship Game appearances to six. However, the Huskies needed Toledo to lose to Western Michigan in the regular season finale to earn a ticket to Detroit against Bowling Green.
These seasons have been marked by erosion and misfortune, but even in the middle of hardships, Boise State and NIU have demonstrated uncommon resilience in college football.
A win in the Poinsettia Bowl would be just the springboard to a 2016 offseason in which hope would spring eternal.
Few programs — not just in the Group of Five, but the whole FBS — have had more reason to hope in their abilities and trust their talents over the past decade of college football history.
