Boise State’s Harsin wants more support from school, conference after New Year’s Six snub
Boise State football coach Bryan Harsin likely will be coaching the Broncos in 2020.
It’s going to take the right opportunity to pry him out of his dream job — and this year there wasn’t one that made sense. Jobs like Missouri and Arkansas would have given him a huge pay increase but little chance to win championships.
Still, Harsin has reached the same point that Dan Hawkins and Chris Petersen did before him. He says it’s time for the mostly stagnant support for his program to increase — and he tied that request to his future on the Blue.
Harsin aimed his message Sunday at the university, its supporters and the Mountain West Conference, seizing the opportunity provided by his first one-loss regular season and his third conference championship in six seasons at the helm.
“I don’t know if there’s a lot of other people that bleed blue as much as I do,” Harsin said at the press conference to discuss the Las Vegas Bowl matchup with Washington. “Settling, or same old, same old, that’s not the mentality, and that’s not what Boise State was ever built on. … And so if we decide that we want to settle, settling is not a place that I want to be. If we want to get better, then I’m all about that. If we want to grow and develop and put ourselves in a position where we can take that next step, like we need to with the type of opponents that we’re about to play moving forward, then those are the types of places you want to be a part of.”
At Boise State, Harsin would like to see progress on the long-discussed project to improve the east side of Albertsons Stadium. The last significant upgrades to the stadium were the bleacher expansion in 2012 and football facility that was completed in 2013.
If that sounds familiar, it should. Hawkins pushed hard for the indoor practice facility during his tenure from 2001 to 2005 — and the Broncos practiced in the facility for the first time as Hawkins was introduced as the coach at Colorado. Petersen wanted the standalone football facility — and the Broncos moved in the summer before he took the Washington job.
But Harsin also noted how the Broncos’ financial support has stalled.
Harsin is making $1.75 million this year — still considerably less than the $2.348 million Petersen was scheduled to make in 2014. Six coaches in the American Athletic Conference and two in the Mountain West were paid more than Harsin this year, according to USA Today.
The Broncos’ 10 full-time assistants made a combined total of about $2.27 million this year — tops in the Mountain West but less than five American programs, according to USA Today. Their nine full-time assistants made $2,436,390 in 2013, Petersen’s last year.
Overall football expenses have increased from $9.2 million in 2012-13 to $11.8 million in 2018-19, according to reports filed with the U.S. Department of Education — but much of that is a reflection of rising program costs like scholarships.
The problem for Boise State and Harsin is that the athletic department’s ticket revenue has decreased every year since at least 2016, according to budget records obtained by the Idaho Statesman. Average football attendance has dropped from 35,404 in 2012 to 32,070 in 2019. Season-ticket sales have plummeted from 24,109 to 16,580 during the same span with prices staying roughly the same.
The Broncos also have replaced wrestling with baseball — a costly trade even before the school builds a stadium.
So while Harsin’s frustration is understandable — he’s competing in a world where budgets and salaries are spiking — it’s also unlikely that Boise State is going to be able to invest much more in his program unless the season-ticket base recovers or the Mountain West’s upcoming TV deal is larger than expected.
Boise State didn’t make Athletic Director Curt Apsey available to address Harsin’s comments.
“I think our comparisons to other teams need to end and we need to start growing and developing into the type of program that we want to be,” said Harsin, who is 64-16 at Boise State. “… The last several years, we’ve kind of stayed at a certain position in certain areas, and it needs to change, and it needs to change now, in order for us to stay competitive. … Our league and our entire university need to be a part of that.”
Mountain West vs. American
The Mountain West, meanwhile, found itself in Harsin’s sights for losing the PR battle with the American.
Memphis beat out Boise State for the Group of Five conferences’ bid to the Cotton Bowl by two spots in the College Football Playoff rankings. Both teams were 12-1; Memphis finished No. 17 and Boise State No. 19.
American Commissioner Mike Aresco went on a media blitz to promote Memphis and Cincinnati — the team the Tigers played in the championship game — and the conference consistently has tried to brand itself as part of the “Power Six.” The American wants to be thought of more like the Power Five conferences than the Group of Five.
“We’ve got to step up and promote or do whatever we have to do along the way,” Harsin said. “There’s just factors that I don’t think we should be doing as coaches and players, but I think people that support our program or are a part of our conference should be doing and doing a better job of it. … When things like this season are happening, you’d sure like to see our university and our conference do the most they can to help put us in a position at the end of the year if everything else has been taken care of.”
Some Boise State fans cheered Harsin’s complaint because they share similar concerns about the conference.
However, Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson could have said anything he wanted and it wouldn’t have made a difference this season. Memphis finished with three wins over teams in the final CFP Top 25; Boise State had zero.
The Mountain West did “a super job” of promoting Boise State and unranked Air Force (10-2) to the committee members directly, CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock said in a phone interview.
The Mountain West declined an interview request for Thompson.
“(Memphis) ultimately had the edge in schedule strength,” Hancock said. “... The committee doesn’t look at conference strength.”
The Broncos’ brand is ‘not like everybody else’
The committee spoke often about the Broncos’ season-opening win at Florida State and the injury that prevented quarterback Hank Bachmeier from playing in the loss at BYU, Hancock said. Schedule strength, however, is based on how teams perform (Florida State is 6-6), not what kind of opponent a school expected to get.
“Boise certainly, in my opinion, did the right thing by scheduling Florida State,” Hancock said. “That was an excellent opportunity for them to show what they can do. A certain amount of scheduling is good luck. … The committee talked a lot about the Boise-Florida State game. There was a lot of respect for Boise for scheduling that game.”
The American now has earned the Group of Five’s spot in the New Year’s Six three straight years and four of the past five, with three different schools (Houston in 2015, UCF in 2017-18 and Memphis in 2019).
The Mountain West earned the spot under the current system only in the first year, when Boise State won the Fiesta Bowl in 2014. Combined with the Bowl Championship Series, Boise State has earned the lower-profile conferences’ bid to a major bowl three times; the rest of the Mountain West’s current members have done it once, with Hawaii in 2007.
Only four Mountain West teams won eight or more games this season; the American had six such teams. That creates more high-profile matchups during the regular season, and more chances to impress.
While Memphis was playing Cincinnati (10-1 and 10-2 going into the games) the past two weeks, Boise State was playing Colorado State (4-7) and Hawaii (9-4).
That’s not a marketing problem. That’s a football problem.
The argument Harsin hinted at Sunday — and the one Boise State might have to push more in the future — is that the Broncos transcend their conference.
This is a program that has won three Fiesta Bowls, that has the highest winning percentage in major college football history, that has gone 24-3 in its conference over the past three seasons, that is 5-3 in its past eight games against ranked opponents and 16-9 against Power Five opponents under Petersen and Harsin.
It’s a program that scheduled a game at Florida State — and won. A program that has upcoming home games against Florida State (2020), Oklahoma State (2021), Michigan State (2022), UCF (2023) and Oregon (2025).
A program that has its own arrangement with ESPN — and delivers far better ratings than its peers. And one that earlier this year signed what some called the best recruiting class ever for a Group of Five school.
“We have a brand here that, it’s not like everybody else,” Harsin said. “We didn’t build this brand and put ourselves in the position that we’re in today just to be like everybody else. That needs to be certainly promoted. … You need to take a program like Boise State and promote it. I see other conferences do that. And I don’t necessarily think that we do a great job of that. … Those things need to be addressed. And I don’t think we can just stay and keep doing the same thing that we’ve done every single year. That’s not what we’re about here.”
Chadd Cripe is the Idaho Statesman’s assistant editor and sports columnist. Contact him at ccripe@idahostatesman.com and follow @chaddcripe on Twitter.
This story was originally published December 12, 2019 at 4:55 PM.
