Ten years, few cheers

MOSCOW, Idaho – On further review, it may have been wiser not to suppress the pregame fight.

Perhaps that was something Idaho could have won Saturday.

Yes, it would have been an ethical minefield for Vandals coach Robb Akey, who has been in the news again showing players the door – well, some of them – for engaging in that very activity. But surely anything goes the week of the Boise State game.

At least it used to.

And for the Vandals, this is very much the Used To game.

It used to matter. They used to dominate. It used to inflame the passions. They used to have a chance.

A full decade has passed now since any of that was true. The Broncos made it an even 10 in a row by dispatching Idaho 45-10 on that Kibbie Dome turf that looks as if someone sprinkled it with carpet deodorizer and then forget to vacuum. It was a game more interesting for what almost happened (the prekickoff throwdown) and what didn’t happen (about 24 more Boise points in the first half) than anything that did.

And, sadly, Akey knew it, too.

“I promise you,” he said on his way out of the interview room, “I thought this was going to be running on SportsCenter tonight.”

Well, it did anyway. Ranked teams always get to watch their highlights on ESPN – Boise State is ninth – and the Vandals were in the same picture just long enough to be included.

Of course, Akey meant for it to be a bigger story – a stunner, a BCS-shaking upset, a national nugget as well as the more important provincial message to the state of Idaho that it’s time they bring something to this game other than seat cushions and pity.

That may still be another decade in the works. Saturday’s spread exceeded the average of the previous nine.

The Broncos are the Gonzaga of college football – with bowl trips the past six years, the forever-classic Statue-of-Liberty thriller over Oklahoma still fresh in the memory and a red-hot coach on every stumbling power’s wish list. The rise has even turned running back Ian Johnson, the Fiesta Bowl hero who proposed to his future missus on the turf in Phoenix, into a near afterthought, eclipsed by a zippy sophomore (Jeremy Avery) and a left-handed quarterback from Prosser, Wash., whom Washington State should be ashamed to have whiffed on.

And the Vandals? Well, they haven’t had a highlight since Y2K, unless you count the four times they hired a new coach – always treated as a celebration.

But that’s just half of college football’s most bizarre in-state series west of the Mississippi. It’s not just that the Broncos have won the last 10, but that the Vandals won 12 in a row before that. There was a five-year bridge when the game was a tossup, but the streaks have been laced with blowouts. It’s been a rivalry in geography only.

Still, Akey wasn’t beyond trying to channel some of the ancient history.

“Before the game, they were showing old highlights of the rivalry,” said Vandals H-back Daniel Hardy, “back to when we beat them 12 in a row. Once we all come together, we’re going to have more moments like that.”

Hardy did have one of those moments. On the game’s first play, he dragged across the middle to latch onto a pass from Nathan Enderle and was corralled by linebacker Kyle Gingg. But all Gingg did was pull Hardy down on top of him, and when the Vandals’ receiver rolled to his feet, he kept rolling down the sideline – 81 yards for a touchdown.

That was Idaho’s one momentum play. Oh, the Vandals sniffed out a fake field goal and knocked down a couple of passes in the end zone, but everything else was the Broncos’ doing – from the first-half failures in the red zone (they settled for three other field-goal attempts, and missed two) to uncorking Avery to run it down Idaho’s collective throat the second half.

The Broncos even took care of the enmity. It’s a Boise tradition for the previous week’s winner of the special teams big hit to lead the team on the field wielding a sledgehammer (no points for subtlety). This time, freshman Doug Martin decided it would be clever to take it all the way to midfield and smash it down on the big gold “I” (subtract points for stupidity).

Naturally, the Vandals took offense, and so the two coaching staffs wound up between the hashmarks trying to keep the combatants apart.

“We don’t need the Mickey Mouse nonsense,” was Akey’s take.

Well, maybe the Broncos did, if only to stay interested. For as overwrought as the Vandals’ constituency gets over anything blue and orange, it might be healthier if it didn’t.

“We’re going to worry about where our football team needs to go,” Akey insisted. “We’ve got to continue growing up. They’ve got a strong program going, and for a long time, and we’re in the second year of building. None of what happened before has any impact.”

Except maybe a cumulative impact. Like repeated hits from a sledgehammer.