Meet Your Bashful No. 1: Boise State

LANDOVER, Md. -- Quarterback Kellen Moore, still in full Boise State gear, stood on a podium in the bowels of FedEx Field in the wee moments of Tuesday and did his best to imitate what he and his teammates once were, a bunch of aw-shucks college football guys from an era gone by.

"It means we're 1-0 and off to a good start against a good team," Moore said through a toothy smile after a reporter asked him to qualify having just come from behind to beat Virginia Tech 33-30 in the last two minutes in an NFL stadium packed with 86,587 people, most outfitted in Virginia Tech colors.

Moore wasn't wrong; he was just reticent.

That was what it meant in years past when Moore's Broncos went out and tripped up a top-10 team like Virginia Tech. But this was the fourth time in Boise State's last five meetings against a top-10 team that it walked away the winner.



And this was the first time Boise State did so at season's start with a lofty ranking generally reserved for college football teams of lore, No. 3 in the country.

So what Moore and his teammates did Monday night before a national television audience meant a lot more than being 1-0. It meant it was the best team in the country after the inaugural week of the season.

Until further notice, whether Boise State's coach and players want to admit it, Boise State is the No. 1 team in the country.

"Thirty-five," Boise State coach Chris Petersen responded with some seriousness when asked where he thought his Broncos should be ranked when Tuesday's votes are tallied.

The top-ranked defending national champions from Alabama opened this season with a romp over San Jose State, which once was really good at track. The second-ranked team started with a romp over Marshall, which graduated to elite college football in the late '90s. Whoopee.

Boise State beat a Hokies team that played so well, Boise State probably shouldn't have won. That was yet another reason to move the Broncos two rungs up the ladder to surpass the Buckeyes and supplant the Crimson Tide as best in the nation, for now.

It is one thing when a team wins running on all cylinders. It is another when it has to overcome itself as well as a really game opponent. Boise State did the latter against Virginia Tech. Its mettle was tested and it stood up.

Indeed, the Broncos coughed up a 17-0 lead they built in dominating fashion in the first quarter. They fumbled away the football twice in doing so. They committed 11 penalties for over 100 yards.

And their defense helped revive comparisons of Virginia Tech quarterback Tyrod Taylor to Michael Vick, who Taylor was said to be the second coming of four years ago when he arrived at the Blacksburg, Va., campus. Taylor rushed for 73 yards, once doing a Houdini escape act that was Vick-esque, and threw for 186 more and two touchdowns.

Taylor marched Virginia Tech to its first lead, 21-20, midway in the third quarter after his defensive teammates recovered a Moore fumble after Moore and one of his linemen clumsily bumped into each other. The Hokies' lead lasted just three plays until D.J. Harper, a Broncos running back who missed the last 11 games last season with an injury, sprinted 71 yards for a touchdown, breaking tackles in the backfield and line of scrimmage.

But with about three minutes left in the third, Taylor threw a strike to a wide receiver, Jarrett Boykin, who turned the 28-yard play into a touchdown. That gave Virginia Tech a 27-26 lead, which it boosted to 30-26 midway through the fourth quarter, after a 10-play, five minutes-plus drive that stalled at Boise State's 16-yard line, resulting in a field goal.

It seemed, finally, that Boise State was, indeed, a Cinderella that was being allowed by the keepers of college football to pretend it was as good as the storied programs like Alabama and Ohio State. And that was when Boise State proved those who have come to think so highly of it correct.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit nervous," Moore admitted.

There was, after all, more riding on this Boise State game than ever before: it's called money. College football dresses it up as a berth in its Bowl Championship Series, which is really reserved, along with its title game, for the best teams from one of its so-called BCS conferences like Virginia Tech's ACC or Alabama's SEC.

Last season Boise State won all of its games and got an invite to a BCS bowl but not the BCS championship game. That meant it got shorted.

Each BCS conference shared one of the BCS bowl games' massive checks, which worked out to $22.2 million each to the Big Ten and SEC conferences and $17.7 million to each of the other four automatic qualifying conferences. Poor Boise State had to share a $24 million pull with all the non-automatic qualifying conferences. Getting a chance to play in the title game would mean a lot more loot. But it all hinged on beating Virginia Tech, and Boise State wound up doing just that in dramatic fashion.

Moore got the ball back with less than two minutes to go and in a little more than half a minute he drove his team five plays and into the end zone. He passed 13 yards up the middle to a wide-open Austin Pettis near the back of the end zone. Moore said it was a last-minute drive they practice all the time, but usually to get a field goal, not a touchdown.

"The bull's-eye will continue to grow," Boise State's coach Petersen admitted afterward. "We'll have some hard-fought games."

But none will likely be what the Broncos found themselves in Monday night, unless it's in the Fiesta Bowl next January for the season-ending rank of No. 1. At least for now, they deserve to be there.

They may as well act like it.