Bronco Nation

Since moving to Boise, we've of course become huge BSU fans. It doesn't hurt that we have two people in our family who go there: Michelle pursuing a Social Work degree and our son Justin pursuing a Music Education degree (though Justin is on a two-year break serving a mission). And its fun to be in the national spotlight with a top ten ranking in NCAA football. Horizon Air has even done a Broncos-themed aircraft now. I snapped this photo (on the right) of our Broncos turboprop just after boarding my regional jet flight to LAX (connecting through to Tokyo) earlier this week. Horizon has university-themed aircraft in their fleet, honoring universities in cities they serve. I've seen the aircraft for the Universities of Oregon and Washington, and now it's good to have one for Boise! I understand that this aircraft did a flyover at Bronco Stadium at the home game a couple of weeks ago - that would have been fun to see.

Boise is a city of just less than 200,000 people, and the whole city goes crazy on a football game day, particularly if it's a home game. Everybody wears blue and orange. All the store marquees have some sort of message for Broncos football. BSU flags are flying on a good percentage of the cars in the city. Local schools even excuse absences for BSU game attendance. At the stadium, tailgate parties are crazy!!! The whole atmosphere is just way fun. People even dress their pitbull dogs in BSU attire on game day (see pic here). I also like this pic from the tailgate parties from the November 14th game, sporting the USA and BSU flags.

This week (Friday after Thanksgiving) BSU plays Nevada in what will end up being the WAC championship game. I'm sad that it won't be broadcast on Japanese TV while I'm here. It should prove to be an exciting game. GO BRONCOS!!!

Below are some additional Bronco Nation photos, and I've linked a bunch more (click here). Michelle's sister and her family were up here a couple of weeks ago, and we went for a walk down at Julia Davis Park and around Bronco Stadium, and that's where these pics are from.

Broncos fans are also patriots.

Pre-game tailgate parties in the parking lot at Bronco Stadium.

BSU-clad dogs pulling a wheelchair. I think this sort of thing could give Santa Claus and his raindeer-pulled sled a run for his money! :-)

Pre-game tailgate parties in the parking lot at Bronco Stadium.

At a tailgate party, one fan even played the Broncos-Vandals matchup on his PS3 before the game. His outcome was 33-14 Broncos. The actual game ended up 63-25 Broncos. Pretty close to the same ratio, ironically, but the wrong score.