“There’s not a liberal America or a conservative America,” President Barack Obama told a cheering crowd at Boise State University, “but a United States of America.”

He said there were a number of reasons he wanted Boise to be his first stop on his tour to spread his State of the Union ideas across the country. One was because he was contacted by a young girl here, Bella Williams, who invited him to come visit. “She also wanted me to learn to ski or snowboard with her,” he said. As someone who grew up in Hawaii, he said, “You do not want to see me ski. The Secret Service does not want to see me ski.”

He recalled the big crowd at his campaign rally in Boise during the 2008 primary, when he first was running for president. “I might not be president if it weren’t for the good people in Idaho,” he said. “Of course, in the general election I got whupped – I got whupped twice, in fact, but that’s OK.”

Commenting on Idaho as a red state, he said, “In a place like Idaho, the only blue turf is on your field.” He also employed another BSU football reference, talking about how he’s in the fourth quarter of his two terms as president. For a university that was the source of the most famous Statue of Liberty play of all time, he said, “I don’t need to remind you that big things happen late in the fourth quarter.”