Brian Burrell has been playing well for Fresno State. (Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports)
It wasn’t just Bowl Championship Series berths that the Broncos lost during their run of painful November losses.
Those defeats also cost them conference championships.
“I think there’s a misconception around the program that Boise State just automatically wins a conference championship every year,” offensive coordinator Mike Sanford said. “We’ve won three outright in the last nine years. We want to get that done. We want to be the fourth team to do that in the last decade.”
In the past nine years, Boise State won outright titles in the WAC in 2006, 2008 and 2009. The Broncos shared titles in the WAC in 2005 and 2010 and in the Mountain West in 2012.
Each of the past four years, the Broncos were in position to win outright titles in November and couldn’t close the deal. Last year, they didn’t even make the conference championship game.
So Saturday’s Mountain West conference championship game against Fresno State on the blue turf of Albertsons Stadium is a huge opportunity for the program.
“We’re obsessed with winning the Mountain West Conference championship around this program. We are,” Sanford said. “… That’s all we talked about from when we started here and that’s what’s driven us to try to get ourselves to different heights.”
The Broncos will need to beat Fresno State for the second time this season to get the title. They won 37-27 on Oct. 17 in Boise.
“You can take that game and watch it, but the teams are both different from where we were,” first-year Boise State coach Bryan Harsin said.
Fresno State (6-6) lost its next game, at home against Wyoming, 45-17. Since then, the Bulldogs are 3-0 with wins against San Jose State, Nevada and Hawaii.
Boise State (10-2) is 5-0 since the Fresno State game and has scored at least 50 points in four of those games. Through the Fresno State game, the Broncos had scored 40 just once.
The Broncos have won seven straight overall.
“You go back and look at our team five or six weeks ago, we’re a different football team,” Harsin said. “Guys are just executing and playing at a better level.”
For Fresno State, the Wyoming game was its version of Boise State’s Air Force game. The Bulldogs were embarrassed, but they responded the right way.
“We’ve been playing with a different energy the last three weeks,” said coach Tim DeRuyter, whose team won the Mountain West last year. “Having (quarterback Brian Burrell) come on has really been a huge factor in our success. He hasn’t played perfect, but he’s led us and inspired the guys around him.”
