In a world full of green football fields, how on earth did Boise State’s become blue?
Until the announcement was made public, then-Athletic Director Gene Bleymaier and President John Keiser were the only ones who knew Boise State’s green football turf was destined to become blue.
“I knew that I couldn’t talk about it because it would get blown out of the water. I would not get the support,” Bleymaier told The Associated Press in 2006. “Really, it was kept pretty much between him and me until we actually announced it. Then, of course, there was all sorts of reaction.”
More than 35 years later, no one could imagine the Albertsons Stadium field being any other way.
But when the first iteration of The Blue was installed in 1986, it took some getting used to. Even AstroTurf, the company that installed Boise State’s first blue field, bristled at the idea.
“They tried to talk us out of it,” Bleymaier told the Idaho Statesman in 2006. “AstroTurf wanted no part of it, really. They had done thousands of green fields, but they had never done a blue field. They really didn’t want to do it. ... I finally said, ‘If you don’t do it, we’ll find somebody else that will.’”
Albertsons Stadium — then known as Bronco Stadium — opened in 1970 and had gone through two green fields by the time Bleymaier took over as athletic director in 1982. When it came time for new turf, he wanted more bang for his buck.
“We figured that if we’re going to spend that much money and put a brand-new field in,” Bleymaier said, “we’d like people to notice.”
The blue turf made its debut on Sept. 13, 1986, against Humboldt State. The Broncos used a blue-and-orange football for the opening kickoff and posted a 74-0 win.
“The creature from the blue lagoon did not pop out of the AstroTurf and gobble up both teams, the cheerleaders and Buster Bronco, proving once and for all that Lake Bleymaier is nothing more than a good promotional idea,” Idaho Statesman columnist Jim Poore wrote on the night of the turf’s debut.
Bleymaier’s brainchild has since grown to be as synonymous with Boise State football as the team’s blue-collar work ethic. And it doesn’t hurt that the football team’s success has coincided with a rise in the popularity of its blue field. Many around the country were first exposed to The Blue when the school began hosting the nationally televised Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (then the Humanitarian Bowl) in 1997.
Then came a move to the Western Athletic Conference in 2001 and a steady climb into the Top 25, and a move to the Mountain West Conference in 2011. On the blue field’s 20-year anniversary, Boise State was 108-30 playing on it — a 78.3 winning percentage.
“If we had a losing football program the last 20 years, people wouldn’t be talking about the blue turf,” Bleymaier said in 2006. “There would be efforts to get rid of the blue turf.”
The blue turf has been replaced in 1995, 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2019. Artificial turf fields typically last eight to 10 years.
While Boise State was the first to install a non-green field, it is not alone these days.
NCAA Division II West Haven has a blue and gold field first installed in 2009 at Ralph F. DellaCamera Stadium in West Haven, Connecticut. There are also colored fields at Eastern Washington, Coastal Carolina, Central Arkansas, Eastern Michigan and Hosei University in Kawasaki, Japan.
In 2011, Boise State obtained a federal trademark for non-green artificial turf fields and now provides free licenses to most other schools that want such fields.
As for the pervasive myth that ducks mistakenly crashed on the blue field thinking it was a lake? That rumor probably started in 1986 when Bleymaier found a videographer inside the stadium hoping to “watch the ducks land.”
“I said, ‘Well, you might be waiting for a long time,’” Bleymaier recalled in 2006. “He said, ‘That’s OK. They’re paying me very well to be here.’”
This story was originally published June 15, 2023 at 4:00 AM.
