How Did They Pull That Off?

Just because they're partial to blue turf and trick plays doesn't mean the Boise State Broncos always fly in the face of convention. Two weeks and a day after accepting a very public marriage proposal from the team's star running back, Ian Johnson, the head cheerleader was asked if she intended to take his name. � "What would you do?" replied the comely Chrissy Popadics. � You may recall the sight of Johnson on bended knee in the moments after the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1, stunning and delighting not just Popadics but also a national TV audience convinced that the spectacle it had just witnessed could not possibly contain another dramatic turn; could not pack--unless your team was Oklahoma--another iota of joy. � Eighteen hours after Boise State's sublime 43--42 overtime victory over the favored Sooners, Johnson and his fianc�e found themselves on a flight from Phoenix to Newark, courtesy of Good Morning America, on which they appeared the following morning. They were recognized wherever they went. "We were walking around Times Square," Popadics recalls, "and people were asking to have their pictures taken with us."

A New Jersey native who moved to Boise when she was nine, Popadics had longed to visit the Garden State during the Christmas season, to be with extended family she hadn't seen in years. "Then, in the snap of a finger, we were there," she marvels. "It was so surreal, it went by in such a blur, I catch myself thinking, Did that really happen?"

Take a number, Chrissy.

Weary of hearing how they were out of their league in a BCS bowl game, the Broncos mugged the Sooners the moment the Big 12 champions stepped out of the tunnel. Boise State led 14--0 early, 21--10 at the half and 28--10 with 5:16 left in the third quarter. Then an Oklahoma punt took a crazy bounce, caroming off the calf of a Bronco and turning the tide. Twenty-five unanswered points later, the Sooners led 35--28. Facing a fourth-and-18 at midfield with 18 seconds left, Boise State quarterback Jared Zabransky looked to the sideline, where his backup, Taylor Tharp, pantomimed juggling--the signal for a play the Broncos call Circus.

Thus began the most outrageous, implausible conclusion to a college football game since Cal's kickoff-return team lateraled its way through the Stanford band 24 years ago. In truth Boise's win eclipsed even that piece of last-second magic. Circus, after all, was but the first of three acts in an absurdist play.

The game was many things to many people. It helped the Broncos strike a blow for mid-majors everywhere, and for the league they've owned for the last five seasons, the wild and woolly Western Athletic Conference. It served as a godsend for advocates of a playoff system. How many such upsets have gone unrealized, they ask, because the system has excluded worthy teams from non-BCS conferences? What might have happened if the Broncos had been given a crack at Florida?

To Boise State's Chris Petersen, recently named the Paul "Bear" Bryant College Coach of the Year, it is, above all else, ironic. "It's interesting that everybody's talking about our trick plays," says Petersen, who after five seasons as the Broncos' offensive coordinator, went 13--0 in his first year as head coach. "Because our whole mission around here is to be a tough, hard-nosed, blue-collar outfit."

Some of that toughness springs from resentment. "As good a place as this is," says Petersen, motioning out his office window, to the blue turf of Bronco Stadium and the Rocky Mountain foothills beyond, "we get a lot of kids who believe they should be playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they want to prove it to the world. We like that mentality."

Lords of the WAC, the Broncos turned into Team Ugly Betty the moment they arrived in Glendale. At Boise's first press conference, recalls Johnson, a reporter thrust a mike in his face and said, "We asked Adrian Peterson what he knew about Ian Johnson, and he said, 'Ian who?'" How do you feel about that?"

Johnson, whose 24 touchdowns this season led the nation, responded tactfully ("Maybe he's not a huge sports fan"). But for him and his teammates, the cataloging of slights had begun. Two weeks after the game, they ticked off the sins of the Sooners, who on at least two occasions mistakenly called the WAC--gasp!--the MAC. "Walking around the mall when we first got there," recalls Ryan Clady, the Broncos' starting left tackle, "they were kind of looking down on us." While Clady, a 6'6", 319-pound sophomore, spoke figuratively, the Boise players' indignation was real. SI.com's Arash Markazi was given behind-the-scenes access to the Broncos all week, and chronicled this scene in Boise State's locker room in the moments before the game: