Presented by ZAMZOWS.
This Day In Sports…December 19, 2020, five years ago today:
In what would be Bryan Harsin’s final game coaching his hometown team, San Jose State wins its first Mountain West championship, dominating Boise State 34-20 in Las Vegas. The Spartans, riding their best season in 81 years, earned the host spot in the title game but had to play it in an empty Sam Boyd Stadium due to COVID-19 restrictions in Santa Clara County. Nick Starkel was the MVP, throwing for 453 yards and three touchdowns on the worn-down Broncos, who finished 5-2 in a season turned upside down by the pandemic.
Boise State’s star was Mountain West Special Teams Player of the Year Avery Williams, who scored on a 69-yard punt return. The Broncos have had some exciting kick returners over the years: Rick Woods, Chris Carr, Quinton Jones, Kyle Wilson, etc. But Williams is the all-timer. And it was officially so in the record books, as his touchdown in the title game tied the FBS career record of nine kick return TDs held by Washington’s Dante Pettis. Meanwhile, true freshman kicker Jonah Dalmas, a former soccer star at Rocky Mountain High, capped a solid debut season with field goals of 51 and 50 yards.
Harsin accepted the Auburn job three days later. He’s a Boise native who succeeded the legendary Jake Plummer as quarterback at Capital High. Harsin walked on at Boise State in 1995, recruited by the late Pokey Allen. He saw it all in his five years as a Bronco: the 2-10 season in 1996 when Allen was away for cancer treatment, the one year under Houston Nutt in 1997, and the three game-changing seasons under Dirk Koetter. Harsin learned all he could from Koetter and started his coaching career at Eastern Oregon in 2000.
One year later, Dan Hawkins brought Harsin back to Boise State as a graduate assistant, then made him tight ends coach from 2002-05 as the program rocketed upward. When Hawkins left for Colorado, new coach Chris Petersen named him offensive coordinator. Harsin built the steamrolling offenses of the late 2000s, including the hook-and-ladder call in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and Kellen Moore’s first three seasons at quarterback. That led to two seasons as offensive coordinator at Texas before he got his first shot as a head coach at Arkansas State.
When Petersen departed for Washington after the 2013 season, Harsin answered the call at the place he knew so well, and in seven seasons he went 69-19 with three Mountain West championships and a Fiesta Bowl victory. He jumped at the chance to coach in the SEC at Auburn, but it was not a good fit. The big-money boosters didn’t take kindly to a Northwest guy, and it ended in less than two seasons. Harsin was offensive coordinator at Cal this season, but that came to a close when Justin Wilcox, his one-time coordinator colleague at Boise State, was fired as Bears coach. Harsin is currently on the market (if he wants to be).
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
