Tuesday, September 4, 2007.

Ian Johnson said it after Boise State’s rout of Weber State last Thursday night: “We treat every team we play with the same amount of respect—the same amount of time we spend watching film on Washington, we did the same thing for Weber State.” One-game-at-a-time indeed. Now for the Washington film. And lots of it, as BSU tries to beat a BCS school on the road for the first time. Since last winter, the Broncos have been trying to put the Fiesta Bowl behind them. This week it truly is, because they have to prove themselves all over again to those who still doubt them. So the game against the Huskies is a big one. BSU 4-4 in its last eight games versus BCS schools, but three of those wins were at home, and the fourth was you-know-where.

The Broncos will be contending with Husky Stadium and a revived Husky Nation that Seattle Times beat writer Bob Condotta says is excited to see a BSU program that has “attained almost cult-like status.” He says Washington officials have called this one of the hottest sellers on the schedule. It’s helped, of course, by Bronco Nation, which long ago scooped up all 6,000 of its allotted tickets through BSU and has been snapping them up through the UW athletic department (there are still a couple thousand left). I’m estimating 10,000 Bronco fans up there—we’ll see. Attendance could top 70,000 in Husky Stadium for the first time since the 2005 Apple Cup.

Stopping the run has been the Broncos’ forte ever since their 87-16 run began in 1999. But it takes on magnification this week as they prepare for Washington quarterback Jake Locker. A night after BSU’s win, the Huskies blasted Syracuse on the Orangemen’s home field, 42-12, and Locker was outstanding in his college debut. As I noted on Sunday Sports Extra, Taylor Tharp's and Locker's numbers were eerily similar in the openers, with both going 14-for-19. Tharp had more yards (184 to 142) and threw a touchdown, whereas Locker didn't. But the much-heralded Husky redshirt freshman, who worked as a counselor this summer at Peyton Manning’s football camp in Louisiana, added a different dimension with his feet, rushing for 83 yards on 10 carries with two touchdowns. This will be a big test for the newbies on the Bronco defense.

On the return teams, it was all “ors” going into the opener against Weber State. And on punt returns, coach Chris Petersen used all his “ors”, with Marty Tadman, Kyle Wilson, Jeremy Childs and Titus Young combining for a staggering 199 yards. Wilson electrified the crowd with his 61-yard return, but he broke his hand in the game and won’t be running back punts Saturday at Washington. The job will be in Tadman’s and Childs’ hands. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of opportunity Childs gets. In games like this, the Broncos tend to go with reliability, as in Tadman. And the senior star was plenty electric versus Weber with his 65-yard return.

Week No. 1 was a huge disappointment for the WAC. Of the three conference teams that played BCS schools, Idaho fared the best—the Vandals losing 38-10 at top-ranked USC after being 46-point underdogs. Idaho hung in well against a team that looked like it expected the Vandals to roll over in the Coliseum. They did not. But Nevada and San Jose State didn’t exactly represent against Nebraska and Arizona State, respectively. The Wolf Pack couldn’t play with the Huskers, who rolled 52-10. And the Spartans provided little resistance for the Sun Devils in Dennis Erickson’s debut, falling 45-3 and getting outgained 520 yards to 115.

Colt Brennan doesn’t necessarily translate into sellout—the opponent still plays into it. But Hawaii got a huge walk-up Saturday after projecting a crowd of about 30,000 in 50,000-seat Aloha Stadium for its expected annihilation of Northern Colorado. Just under 37,000 watched Brennan play just the first half—and still throw for 416 yards and six touchdowns in the Warriors’ 63-6 win. Brennan’s Heisman Trophy campaign has helped with season tickets, though. UH has sold about 22,300 season tickets, increase of over 4,000 from last year when the Warriors hit a 25-year low.

Jared Zabransky waited out the waiver process, and it’s paid off, as he’s been signed to the Houston’s practice squad. The former Boise State star was cut Friday, cleared waivers, and picked back up by the Texans. Derek Schouman also gets an NFL paycheck, as he was signed to Buffalo’s practice squad after being released. Former Drisan James didn’t survive the Bears’ final cut. But there’s still life for 36-year-old Kimo von Oelhoffen, the player with the longest career of any Boise State product. Von Oelhoffen has a chance to extend it to 14 years—he was cut by the Jets Saturday, but the Eagles grabbed him off the waiver wire.

It’s hard to tell what to make of the four-game split the Boise State basketball team comes home with from its one-province tour of Canada. The Broncos won the first two with mainstays Reggie Larry and Anthony Thomas and lost the last two with them, including yesterday’s 106-86 defeat at the University of British Columbia. Coach Greg Graham used a lot of different combinations as he meshed his new players with the veterans. One stat that stands out: BSU got torched by three-pointers in its two losses, watching Douglas College and UBC combine to go 31-for-57.

The pennant race in the Northwest League East Division has come down to two games in Memorial Stadium. The Boise Hawks beat Tri-City 5-3 last night to stay alive. If the Hawks win both tonight and tomorrow night, they’ll be division champs—and they’ll avoid a losing season (they’re now 36-38—it’s been an odd summer, to be sure). The Hawks used two eighth inning home runs to put the game away, one a clutch two-run shot by Tony Thomas that broke a 2-2 tie, and the other a solo homer from Josh Donaldson, who might be the team’s MVP this year. It was Donaldson’s ninth of the season.

I saw D.J. Thompson at Friday night’s Hawks game. The Boise businessman and former University of Idaho golfer is cool, calm and collected as he awaits tonight’s finale of “For Inventors Only” on the Golf Channel. Thompson’s Z-Factor Perfect Putting Machine invention is one of five finalists on the reality show. He says they’ll still be taking votes 40 minutes into the show tonight—by text and online at www.thegolfchannel.com.

Bishop Kelly Nick Symmonds found out Friday how much ground he has to make up in the next year if he’s going to make a dent at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Symmonds made the semifinals of the 800 meters at the World Track & Field Championships in Osaka, Japan, but missed making the finals by over a second, running a 1:46.41. The other American in the semis, Khadevis Robinson, also failed to qualify for the finals.

This Day In Sports…September 4, 1999:

Boise State plays its first-ever game against UCLA, opening the season in the Rose Bowl. A pre-game ceremony honored the late Paul Reyna, a Bronco freshman who had died tragically two weeks earlier. BSU fell to the Bruins, 38-7—providing no clue as to the fate of each team’s season. UCLA would go 4-7, while the Broncos would win the Big West and Crucial.com Humanitarian Bowl titles with a 10-3 record, kicking off what is currently known as the “golden era”.

(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment Sunday nights at 10:30PM on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra and anchors five sports segments each weekday on 1350 KTIK/The Ticket. He also handles color commentary on KTVB’s telecasts of Boise State football.)

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