This Boise State fan flew 8,000 miles for the Mountain West title game. What’s your excuse?

A chance trip to a Los Angeles bar in 2003 forever tinted Jason Ellis’ life blue and orange.

Ellis is Australian — born and raised. During a trip to Southern California 15 years ago, Ellis stopped at a bar. He never really watched “secondary sports” back home, but another bar patron convinced him to watch a college football game.

The game? None other than the Fort Worth Bowl that pitted TCU against Boise State.

The bar patron was rooting for the Horned Frogs so, naturally, Ellis chose the Broncos. Boise State won that game 34-31 behind 325 passing yards from quarterback Ryan Dinwiddie.

Since then, Ellis has followed the careers of Kellen Moore, Doug Martin, Austin Pettis and Brett Rypien as closely as anyone in the Treasure Valley. And, about 24 hours ago, Ellis decided spur-of-the-moment that he needed to be at Saturday’s Mountain West Championship Game against Fresno State — more than 8,300 miles away from his home in Melbourne.

After flights from Australia to Los Angeles and Los Angeles to San Francisco, Ellis spoke with the Statesman by phone before boarding his flight to Boise. He’ll spend 25 hours in the air.

“I don’t think they’ve had a losing season since I started,” Ellis said with a laugh.

Ellis, 48, went to three other Boise State games this year, against Colorado State, BYU and at Nevada, spending a total of seven weeks in the states. He also went to last season’s homecoming game. As a self-employed worker in logistics, Ellis said he has leeway in his schedule.

After that fateful bar-watching experience in Los Angeles 15 years ago, Ellis traveled back to Australia and researched ways to watch Boise State. He was then introduced to the blue field.

From then on, he’s bled Bronco blue.

Ellis still wallows in his disappointment from 2010, when he was preparing a trip to the Rose Bowl — where the Broncos would have likely played. But before the Broncos had solidified their spot, a loss at Nevada against quarterback Colin Kaepernick ruined that dream.

His favorite Bronco, unsurprisingly, is Kellen Moore, though he makes sure to point out that he has a particular fondness for running back Doug Martin as well.

Ellis has never been to a Mountain West Championship game, and that didn’t sit well with him — so much so that he had trouble sleeping.

Upon waking up at 4:40 a.m. on Friday Australia time (10:40 a.m. Thursday in Boise), Ellis made a spur-of-the-moment decision: he was going to Albertsons Stadium. Five hours later, he was on the first leg of his journey. He couldn’t let the moment pass him by.

Ellis posted his itinerary on the Bronco Nation Updates page on Facebook. The post has more than 400 likes.

“I just had to be there. It’s going to be Brett Rypien’s last game,” Ellis said. “I’ve been a big fan of his and (A.J.) Richardson and (Sean) Modster … there’s a lot of real, real talent at the door.”

Ellis said it’s possible (albeit unlikely) that if Boise State were to win the Mountain West and other dominoes fell the right way, there’s a chance he could stay in the United States and catch his first Fiesta Bowl.

Until then, however, Ellis will enjoy his trip to Boise, though the first thing on his agenda upon landing Friday afternoon is a long nap at his hotel.

He needs some sleep to cheer his loudest on Saturday.

“I’ve met some nice people that allowed me to join their tailgating party. It’s probably going to be an annual thing for me, coming to Boise,” Ellis said. “I like Boise as a place, and I like the people.”

This story was originally published November 30, 2018 at 2:20 PM.