That was an impressive Boise State team I watched in the MAACO Bowl last night. It did what good teams having an off night do – hang on in the face of early turnovers and then grind the other team down. That should make for a lot of talk about where BSU’s season would have wound up if the Broncos hadn’t lost to Nevada.
And selfishly speaking, I’m glad that’s how it went down. You can already hear the narrative over the summer as ESPN builds up the hype for Georgia’s opener next season (expect to become tired of hearing Kyle Brotzman’s name and “if only”, along with some chatter about revenge for 2005). And that’s good. The bigger and badder Boise gets portrayed, the better Georgia comes off looking.
One little catch: it won’t be this year’s Boise State team we’ll be watching in Atlanta. Kellen Moore will be there, but a lot of his teammates won’t.
… All things considered, it was probably a better team than the ’09 edition over the course of the entire season – except for the season-killing collapse in Reno, which slammed the window shut, possibly forever. This time, ten starters will be moving on in 2011, including Brotzman, prolific receivers Titus Young and Austin Pettis and All-WAC defenders Ryan Winterswyk, Winston Venable, Brandyn Thompson and Jeron Johnson.
I still expect the Broncos to come into that game as the higher ranked team. They should be a good measuring stick for Georgia. Not to mention that we’ll get to see Aaron Murray going head-to-head with a Heisman Trophy candidate in Moore. A big game in that setting and he could start getting a lot of national hype himself.