Kings of the Mountain: Broncos cap off improbable run with final MW title

BOISE (Idaho Stateman) — Standing in the pouring rain as he watched his team shuffle onto the team plane just hours after Boise State football’s 17-7 loss to San Diego State on Nov. 15, a whirlwind of thoughts ran through Spencer Danielson’s mind: “What are we missing?” “Why can’t we get going?” “It’s just not happening.”

Just a couple of weeks before that moment, on the front side of a bye week, Danielson had lost his first game at Albertsons Stadium as a head coach. Starting quarterback Maddux Madsen got hurt and the Broncos suffered a 30-7 defeat to Fresno State. Danielson and his team were booed off the field. Those back-to-back losses dropped the Broncos to 6-4 overall and 4-2 in the Mountain West, and put them on the outside looking in to make the championship game.

“It was painful. … Tough moment,” Danielson admitted Friday night. Just three weeks later, life couldn’t be more different for Danielson and Boise State. As Madsen took a knee to end the Broncos’ 38-21 win over UNLV in the league title game at Albertsons Stadium, Danielson was one of the first people to walk onto the field, swinging his fist with enough momentum that his leg kicked back. As fans rushed the field around him, Danielson simply raised his arms in triumph. What seemed improbable on Nov. 15 was reality on Dec. 6, with Boise State (9-4) celebrating a third consecutive Mountain West championship and sixth overall, on its way out of the conference to be part of the reborn Pac-12.

“I believe that this has been a year of fulfillment,” Danielson said after the victory. “It didn’t feel like that at times this year. But sitting here now, it is a year of fulfillment.” Danielson became just the second coach in FBS history to win a conference title in his first three seasons as a head coach. The only other coach to achieve that was Lincoln Riley, who did so at Oklahoma from 2017-19.

All three of the Broncos’ triumphs came at the expense of UNLV (10-3), which fell 44-20 in Las Vegas in 2023 and 21-7 last year in Boise.

Boise State reached this point after winning two do-or-die games, first at home against Colorado State, and then on the road at Utah State, where Danielson’s team had to rally for a 25-24 win behind backup QB Max Cutforth.

Even then, there was a four-way tie atop the conference standings, and the Mountain West used composite computer rankings to determine who would meet in the final. The Broncos actually finished second in that metric, but by virtue of beating UNLV 56-31 in the regular season, they got to host the title game.

And they made the most of it, heading to the Pac-12 of kings of the Mountain West. Since the conference began having championship games in 2013, Boise State has appeared in nine of them, going 6-3.

The Rebels are not one of the five Mountain West programs heading to the Pac-12, and they might be happy to see the Broncos go. UNLV was one of the conference’s punching bags for a while, but it has enjoyed three straight winning seasons — and three straight losses to its nemesis. Boise State and the Rebels met 10 times as MW foes. The Broncos won all 10.

“That’s just the realignment of college football, of how it is,” UNLV head coach Dan Mullen said of the fact that this was the last time the teams would meet for the foreseeable future. “We’re going to line up and play who we’ve got to play on the schedule week in and week out, and hopefully continue to win them. UNLV has not had a lot of success in the past, and guys like (UNLV linebacker) Marcel McDuffie have changed that.”

In Danielson’s tenure, one of the key players who has made success possible is Madsen, a 5-foot-10 redshirt junior who has endured plenty of scrutiny, this season in particular. Cutforth threw for 341 yards and two touchdowns to lead the comeback over Utah State, but Danielson left no doubt who the starting QB was.

As soon as Madsen was healthy, he’d be ready to roll, the coach said. Friday night’s action was the first for Madsen since he suffered an ankle injury in the first quarter of the Fresno State loss, a game in which the team heard a whole lot of boos.

He silenced any doubters Friday night, being named the offensive MVP after throwing for 289 yards and three touchdowns, and rushing for a 10-yard score.

Madsen had a moment when he got hurt that he thought he might be done for the season — he missed whole weeks of practice while fighting to be healthy for Friday night.

“Being able to kind of be in the depths of the water and come out of that as champs is a huge deal,” Madsen said, a purple MVP crown balanced jauntily on his golden locks. “And there’s no better feeling to celebrate.”