Boise State Broncos – Football’s Field Of Blue

There is one thing for sure about the Boise State Broncos football team – it is one of the toughest in the nation. With talented players at every position, the kids in the blue and orange uniforms have earned a place in the national spotlight – and it’s one that they appear unlikely to relinquish anytime soon. Of course, playing in the Western Athletic Conference doesn’t provide quite the level of national exposure that a team can garner in the SEC or Big Twelve, so the Broncos have had their work cut out for them as they struggled to be taken as seriously as they deserve. Even after posting an undefeated 13 victory season in 2006 – which culminated in their dismantling of the Sooners team in that year’s Fiesta Bowl, ad still another undefeated season in 2009, most analysts and fans still doubted that the team was deserving of a berth on the national championship ticket. That didn’t happen, unfortunately, so the Broncos still fee that they have not yet gotten all of the attention that they deserve. One area in which they always manage to capture the football world’s eye, however, is their football field. It’s a gorgeous shade of… blue. Yes, that’s right – blue.

How to get a blue field

There is a good reason why Bronco Stadium is such a curiosity – its blue field is alone among all of the stadiums in the country. Though there have been many rumors that the Broncos chose the blue field in an attempt to have the color of their field blur with the blue in their players’ uniforms, the truth is something less conspiratorial entirely. In fact, the real reason why the field ended up blue when Boise State revamped their Astroturf surface back in 1985 is simple: they figured if they were going to spend the better part of a million dollars for new turf, they might as well get some publicity out of the deal. After considering all their options, the school eventually settled on installing Astroturf that was similar to the blue of the team uniform. They were right in their selection, apparently – the attention the field gets has been non-stop ever since.

The real advantage

As for the argument that the blue field color enables Boise State players to avoid detection by opposing teams – as if they all go into some sort of “stealth” mode when they step on the field – has been the subject of much discussion over the years. Most of the teams who have played on that field acknowledge that notion that a blue uniform on blue field advantage exists is as silly as saying that any team that has ever worn green on a grass field somehow became invisible to the competition. To sum up the point, the coach of Louisiana Tech once noted that his teams had never encountered any difficulty as a result of the field color. The Tech teams’ real difficulty with the Boise State team had only to do with the high level of talent that the Broncos routinely fielded.

Alone forevermore

Nevertheless, Boise State is fated to be the sole college team with a football field of blue. The NCAA has made any other such designs illegal, though they still allow the Broncos to retain their field color for as long as they have Bronco Stadium intact.

Broncos fans, and college enthusiasts across the country, can take solace in knowing that the Boise State football team is likely to play on that field of blue far, far into the future.

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