No Small Potatoes

It would be accurate to say the arc of Boise State’s undefeated season has not matched, say, that of Auburn’s.

No one around the state house here has bellowed “any team that emerges from the Western Athletic Conference unscathed deserves a shot at the national title!”

The Boise State coach -- quick, do you know his name? -- has not campaigned for his team, called the BCS a “failure” or tried to woo Associated Press poll voters.

Boise State, not USC, owns the nation’s longest winning streak at 21 games, yet hasn’t been able to get a word in potato wedge-wise this year because it isn’t even considered the best team among the BCS underlings -- that distinction belonging to Utah.

And you’re wrong if you think any of this bothers fourth-year Coach Dan Hawkins.

“If the country thinks we’re great and awesome, OK; if they think we stink, I’m not going to spend a bunch of time stewing over that,” he said this week.

Interestingly, Boise’s improbable voyage this year has played right into the 43-year-old Hawkins’ quirky mantra -- work hard, keep your traps shut, get better and let life come to you.

The philosophy paid off this week when the Broncos, minding their Boise business, cracked the top 10 in both polls for the first time in school history.

Sweeter yet, Boise State moved to No. 7 in this week’s BCS rankings and can earn an automatic berth to a major bowl -- Rose, Fiesta, Sugar -- if it finishes in the top six.

Boise State (10-0) could possibly earn that spot should Texas A&M; defeat No. 5 Texas today and the Broncos win Saturday night at Nevada.

In the end, Boise will have made plenty of noise without trying to make any. And that somehow makes sense for a program under Hawkins that is an extension of a behavioral-science experiment with tethers to UC Davis and its now-retired coach, Jim Sochor.

Hawkins played for Sochor, a Division II legend who used a football field to implement his theories on Taoism, an ancient Chinese religion/philosophy that espoused a noncombative approach to living.

One tenet of Taoism is “be still like a mountain and flow like a great river,” which is a far cry from that football adage, “kill the guy with the ball.”

Hawkins’ eyes brightened when Sochor’s name was invoked by a visiting reporter.

“There’s a whole lot of that in there,” Hawkins said of Sochor’s influence. “You run across guys in your profession and they go, ‘Oh, you’re a Davis guy.’ They all know, they all know we think a little bit differently.”

Sochor won 18 league championships at Davis and retired in 1988 with a record of 146-42. He was a 1999 inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame.

Hawkins makes clear he is a practicing Catholic while at the same time subscribing to some of Sochor’s football spiritualism.

Boise State players get a kick out of some of Hawkins’ motivational influences, but they can’t quibble with the results.

“Most of the stuff makes sense,” sophomore quarterback Jared Zabransky said. “He doesn’t take it too far out there.”

Examples?

“Like we were playing Oregon State,” Zabransky said, “and he said ‘it’s not the armament of the warrior that makes him a great warrior, it’s what’s inside of him.’ ”

Modern-day application, according to Zabransky: “Don’t be intimidated by the Beaver on their helmet.”

Bingo.

Less than a week after Oregon State nearly defeated Louisiana State in Baton Rouge, Boise State crushed Oregon State, 53-34.

Hawkins seems to have an endless supply of sayings:

* “Bigger isn’t better, better is better.”

* “Half the people think you’re an idiot and half the people think you’re a genius and you’re neither one.”

* “You can’t run your life worrying about what other people think.”

This Boise mind-set has been useful this year as the team’s national profile has been either largely ignored or pilloried by the likes of ESPN’s Trev Alberts.

Hawkins’ response to all this: go with the flow.

To get television exposure this year, Boise State has had to play games at unimaginable hours, notably a 9 a.m. kickoff at San Jose State.

Boise State players arose to a 5 a.m. wake-up call.

“It was dark until like seven,” Zabransky said. “We were outside and it was pitch black, going through walk-throughs.”

It took two agonizing overtimes for Boise State to win that game over a poor Spartan team, an effort that effectively doomed any chance the Broncos had to make their national case.

Hawkins could complain about start times and caving to the dictates of television, but what good would it do?

Here, Hawkins borrows a saying from a not-so-ancient philosopher, his father.

“My dad used to tell me as a kid, ‘People in hell want ice water,’ ” Hawkins said. “It doesn’t really matter what you want. So, whether it’s a late game, an early game, Friday, Thursday, whatever, we just deal with it.”

Stand there and take it ... and see where you’re standing in the end.

Until about 10 minutes ago, what people wanted to know most about Boise State had little to do with football.

The Broncos, of course, are noted for playing on “blue” AstroTurf, which has spawned mostly apocryphal stories of birds dive-bombing onto the field thinking it is a lake.

And, naturally, people want to know about the potatoes.

As part of a recent weeknight telecast between Boise State and Fresno State, ESPN handed Zabransky, who was raised on a potato farm, a spud and wondered how far he could chuck it.

“It gets old,” Zabransky says of the stereotypes, “and it takes away from some of the stuff that really deserves credit like our football team.

“But if that’s what’s going to get us more exposure, so be it.”

So be it.

Those words could be the rallying cry of Bronco football.

Boise State always has been a powerhouse program, almost from the time the school opened as a junior college in 1932.

Hawkins didn’t invent top-flight football here as much as he took the baton and didn’t drop it.

Hawkins, a Bronco assistant, took over in 2001 when Dirk Koetter left to become coach at Arizona State.

Koetter won 20 games his last two years at Boise before leaving the legacy to Hawkins, a bookish-looking man whose coaching career path to that point had been a granola-bar circuit of stops: Sonoma State, College of the Siskiyous and Willamette (Ore.).

Boise State’s rise to top-10 status is more startling when you learn it did not become a four-year college until 1965 and has been playing on the Division I-A level only since 1996.

“Whether they were a junior college, or Division II or I-AA, they’ve always been very good,” Hawkins said.

“I think part of it is we are kind of the show in town.”

Hawkins said Koetter deserved the bulk of credit for creating the sheer “inertia” it takes to establish a major-college program.

A big question now is whether Hawkins will follow Koetter’s path and leave Boise for a major-conference program.

Hawkins would seem to be a prime candidate for the vacancy at Washington, yet there’s enough mystery in Hawkins to make him a tough read.

Hawkins certainly is not typical of coaches who are on a fast track to the top.

“You ever hear that old story that you’re so busy climbing the ladder you got to the top and figured out it was on the wrong wall?” he asked.

Hawkins said there were jobs out there that might be intriguing, perhaps even Washington.

“I know about that one,” he said.

He also added, “The logo on my chest doesn’t determine my status in this profession ... I don’t have to feel like I’ve got the nation’s best players playing in the nation’s best stadium playing in the nation’s best game. I want to make a difference. I want to impact people. That’s what beats in my heart and soul.”

Let life happen.

Bigger is not better, better is better.

Jim Sochor’s voice still rings in Hawkins’ head.

Is Washington better than Boise State, or is it just bigger?

Isn’t it possible to create your own peace, at your own pace?

Wasn’t Florida State a women’s college before Bobby Bowden turned it into major-college behemoth?

“If it’s my destiny to be the head coach at some other place, that’ll happen,” Hawkins said.

“If it’s my destiny to be the Bobby Bowden of Boise State, then I totally believe that will happen as well.”