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This Day In Sports…September 14, 1985:
The first home game in the final season of green turf at Bronco Stadium. And UC Davis visits with a new JC transfer quarterback from Sacramento City College named Chris Petersen. The Division II Aggies gave the Division I-AA Broncos all they wanted before falling 13-9, with Petersen throwing for 238 yards and rushing for 63 on the night. Boise State was helped by a 56-yard Roberto Moran field goal, a school record that stands to this day—he now shares the mark with Jonah Dalmas, who tied the mark in 2023 against UCF.
Boise State would go on to a 7-4 season and miss the Division I-AA Playoffs. Nobody knew at the time that it would be the farewell season on the green, as athletic director Gene Bleymaier didn’t come up with the blue turf idea until the following February. So there wasn’t anything remarkable about the Broncos’ 1985 season. They narrowly missed a big upset in the season opener, falling to Utah 20-17 in Salt Lake City. Boise State won five in a row from mid-October to mid-November, but a 44-27 loss to Idaho in the Kibbie Dome ended its playoff hopes.
As for the future Coach Pete, he’d go on to post a 19-3 record in his two seasons as the starter at UC Davis. Petersen would lead Division II in pass efficiency both seasons and is still ranked eighth all-time in Division II with a 164.0 career pass efficiency rating. He was signed by the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL in 1987, but the team folded right before training camp. That was a twist of fate for Petersen, as when he returned to UC Davis to go to graduate school, legendary Aggies’ coach Jim Socher hired him to lead the school’s freshman/junior varsity team.
So Petersen found himself doing the one thing he vowed to never to as a coach’s son: coach. He told KTVB’s Jordan Smith a few weeks ago he was a fish out of water early. “This thing could not be going worse,” Petersen recalled. “I have no control. I don’t know anything about what I’m doing here.” But that anxiety would morph into a love of teaching the game to legions of 18 to 23-year-olds. After rising to the varsity staff at UC Davis, he coached on the Pittsburgh and Portland State staffs before honing his craft as wide receivers coach for six seasons at Oregon.
In 2001, Dan Hawkins talked Petersen into coming to Boise State to be offensive coordinator. And the rest is…you know. The Broncos scored points in bushels in the early 2000s. And when Hawkins went to Colorado after the 2005 season, the guy who wasn’t sure he ever wanted to be a head coach took the job. Coach Pete, of course, was 92-12 at Boise State with two undefeated seasons before going 55-26 at Washington and taking the Huskies to the College Football Playoff. Next step: enshrinement in both the Boise State Athletics Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame.
(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.)
