SALT LAKE CITY -- Last year, Boise State's football coaches wanted their players to forget. Forget about the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, the parade in Downtown Boise, the No. 5 final ranking.
This offseason, the coaches are intent on making sure the Broncos remember. Remember that they did not claim the WAC championship for the first time since 2001. Remember that it was Hawaii that walked away with the hardware.
That's why a picture of a jubilant Warriors team hangs in the Broncos' weight room. That's why strength and conditioning coach Tim Socha often wears a Hawaii "WAC champions" T-shirt and won't take his Hawaii Bowl ring - a sign of what the Broncos did not accomplish - off. Missing from everyone's finger is the WAC championship ring that players have grown accustomed to.
"We have a lonely finger," senior running back Ian Johnson said.
That's why, when Boise State breaks down at practices, they don't say, "1, 2, 3 Champs." Instead, the chant is "1, 2, 3 Take Back the WAC."
"It's not so much redemption as taking back what we feel is ours and what we feel is our main goal and something we feel absent without," Johnson said.
To that end, the Broncos are hoping to get back to "being Boise State football, blue-collar football," as Mike T. Williams explained at the WAC football media preview.
Johnson - and other current Bronco stars - are noticeably absent from this year's media guide covers. Instead of highlighting award candidates, the cover's most prominent feature is a team logo. A player, his number obscured, is also pictured carrying "The Hammer." Not a single current player is featured on the back cover or the inside covers.
"Everybody has a role. No one role is more important than any other," coach Chris Petersen said.
Don't think for a minute these things - the Hawaii poster, the media guide cover, etc. - are not part of a plan. They are intended to send a message. Some schools, including just about every one of the Broncos' WAC rivals, would be ecstatic about a 10-3 season. The Broncos are anything but.
It appears they have learned some lessons. Hard lessons. Hard lessons that can get forgotten when victories and conference championships become customary.
Each pat on the back takes away from the chip on the shoulder. The Broncos have had plenty of pats on the back in the past few years.
"It put everything back in perspective. We can get beat. We need to get back to working harder, harder than we've normally been working," Williams said of losing the final two games of the 2007 season - to Hawaii in a defacto WAC title game and to East Carolina in the Hawaii Bowl.
The chip, at least part of it, has returned. Johnson sounded like a man driven to reestablish himself as a dominant player. Williams, a senior defensive end, stressed the need to finish - finish games, finish seasons. Petersen, through gritted teeth, answered a question about what losing can teach a program. Clearly he'd rather not find out what losing can teach a program.
"We learned some lessons on how fine the line between winning and losing can be," Petersen said. "... We've got to make sure we're not playing from a defensive mode, that we're attacking, that we do have something to prove, that we're going after people."
The Broncos are starting with themselves. Johnson said the summer player-run practices have been intense affairs and not the light-hearted efforts they were in the past. Attendance has picked up. So, too, has the verbal bickering and bantering.
"You see guys really don't want to lose this again," Johnson said.
One painful offseason, one Hawaii poster, one lonely finger is enough.
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