Dead birds on Boise State’s blue field? It’s happened, but did they crash-land?

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — The city of Boise and surrounding area have some great ponds and lakes for residents to enjoy on a hot summer’s day. There’s Quinn’s Pond right by the heart of downtown, or big Lucky Peak for those willing to take a quick 15-minute drive.

There is the Boise River right through town, dotted by a plethora of parks.

All of these places lure the ducks and the geese.

And then there’s Albertsons Stadium.

Yes, that old story.

For the past 40 years, Boise State football’s blue turf has drawn jokes and jabs, and there has been that urban myth about how all manner of birds were mistaking the field for a giant pond, resulting in their crashing-landing like a quarterback taking a big hit from a charging linebacker.

With Boise State set to install fresh blue turf this summer, the time is right again to ask the question: Is it truly the case that birds think the blue turf is a watery landing spot, causing disaster?

For the millionth time, it's not a lake, dude pic.twitter.com/vcA19kNsec

— Boise State Football (@BroncoSportsFB) May 2, 2016

“I can neither confirm nor deny that report,” former Boise State Athletic Director Gene Bleymaier teased in a recent interview with the Idaho Statesman.

It’s a bit that Bleymaier, who first came up with the idea of a blue field in 1986, has been keeping up for the past four decades. But he did come clean and say that ducks and birds crash-landing on the blue field is a myth — but it’s a myth with a deep history.

The joke first emerged mere days after Boise State installed the blue turf at then-Bronco Stadium in 1986. Naysayers had already scoffed at the idea, and the jokes only continued to grow once AstroTurf was installed with zero markings.

No hash marks, no end zones, just a giant blue patch.

Reporters would ask Bleymaier whether the duck rumors were true, and he even found a videographer in the stadium later that year waiting for ducks to land. But the answer was always the same: “I can neither confirm nor deny that report.”

However, the turf certainly isn’t absent of duck-related lore.

Iconic Boise State quarterbacks Ryan Dinwiddie (2000-03) and Kellen Moore (2007-11) told the Statesman that they’d not seen birds crash-land onto The Blue, but Dinwiddie did say that excrement from Canada Geese was often an obstacle during winter workouts and conditioning.

Legendary Boise State head coach Chris Petersen, however, actually did see dead ducks on the field.

Petersen coached at Boise State from 2001 to 2013 — including as head coach from 2006 onward — and would often get the duck question from visiting recruits and their families. On just another regular visit, Petersen got the question as they were walking out toward the field … and there the poor water birds were.

“I look up, and there are two dead ducks on the field,” Petersen told the Statesman. “And I looked at (the recruit), and I look back. … I said, ‘Well, if that doesn’t answer your question right there, I don’t know what does!’”

Did those ducks meet their doom because of a fatal decision from high above? Petersen still doesn’t quite buy into that.

“We had raccoons around that stadium, and two raccoons got hold of them, because you could tell how they were torn apart,” Petersen said. “We had some raccoons out around the stadium, and so you could just tell how it wasn’t from landing on the turf.”