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This Day In Sports…August 17, 1995:
Well, it wasn’t actually when Bobby Dye quit smoking, but it leads to a great story about the legendary Boise State coach. It was on this day that Dye, the most successful basketball coach in school history at that point, suddenly resigned three months before his 13th season was to begin. Dye and the Boise State administration had been wrangling over the length of his contract, and the veteran coach elected to step down after an overall record of 213-133 with the Broncos, including four 20-win seasons. Dye was best known nationally for leading Cal State Fullerton on a Cinderella run to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight in 1978. He was replaced that day at Boise State by top assistant Rod Jensen.
Dye, who was inducted into the Boise State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2022, has an unforgettable place in the university’s sports history. This is a piece I wrote for “The Broncos,” the Boise State history book published in 1995. It’s a true story.
THE NIGHT BOBBY DYE QUIT SMOKING
It was a dark and stormy night. Okay–it wasn’t stormy, but it was typically frigid for Flagstaff Arizona at the end of January. About as cold as Boise State’s 1985-86 basketball team was from the floor all season. And this game would be the standard.
The Broncos had just lost to Northern Arizona 78-42, which still stands (and now will forever) as BSU’s biggest Big Sky conference loss. The team could not hit the ocean, and–worst yet–did not play the defense so methodically taught by Dye and his “Minister of Defense,” Rod Jensen.
Outside the Walkup Skydome after the game, Dye was exasperated. I was Paul J. Schneider’s color commentator on KBOI Radio at the time, and Dye asked us if he could catch a ride back to Phoenix in our rental car. He said he wasn’t particularly thrilled about a 2½-hour bus trip with a bunch of guys who…well…he wasn’t particularly thrilled with.
Paul J and I looked at each other–knowing every bit of Bobby’s frustration was about to be unloaded on us.
So we pulled out of Flagstaff with Bobby in the backseat. He cracked the rear window, pulled a pouch of tobacco out of the pocket of his warmup suit, and lit up his pipe.
As he puffed away, Dye detailed his anxiety in this, his third year as head coach of Boise State. He said he had been able to turn around every program he had taken over, and he wondered why it hadn’t happened here.
He talked about recruiting–how he and his staff had set their sights high and had narrowly lost some blue-chippers to programs such as Arizona, Washington and Wyoming.
He decried unfounded rumors from a booster that one prize recruit he did land, true freshman guard Chris Childs, was going to transfer.
He hinted that he’d give it one more year at BSU–and if there wasn’t a turnaround by then, he’d leave.
Somewhere around Camp Verde, halfway down into the Valley of the Sun, the mostly one-sided conversation stopped. I turned around to look at Bobby–then leaned over toward Paul J. and said, “He’s asleep!”
When we rolled into Phoenix, Schneider pulled into a convenience store to pick up a Racing Form. (Turf Paradise, you know.)
I sat there waiting and heard the back door open. Dye had awakened. He walked over to the trash can, pulled the pipe tobacco out of one pocket, and tossed it in. Out of his other pocket came the pipe, and it went in, too. Then he got back in the car.
“What did you do that for?” I asked.
“I just quit smoking,” Bobby replied.
“Right now?”, I said.
“I had to change something.”
Something changed indeed. The Broncos finished the grueling Flagstaff-Reno road swing by taking Nevada to the wire before losing by six.
From there, BSU went 5-3 the rest of the regular season, avenging the embarrassment at NAU with a 58-52 shocker over the league-leading Lumberjacks in the Pavilion finale.
The 1986-87 season dashed any thoughts of a Dye departure. It was a storybook campaign. By mid-January, the Broncos had already racked up 12 wins–as many as the entire 1985-86 season.
Childs and fellow holdovers Eric Hays and Jeff Kelley combined with newcomers Arnell Jones, Doug Usitalo, Gregg Dodd, Wilson Foster and Jeff Foster to give Dye the team he had been waiting for. The first of three straight 20-win seasons led to BSU’s first bid to the NIT, where the Broncos stunned Utah in the first round.
Bobby would win 175 games at BSU after that fateful Arizona car ride, taking Boise State to three Big Sky championships with three NCAA Tournament appearances. And he still hasn’t bought a new pipe.
(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.)
