Looking back at Boise State's undefeated, Fiesta Bowl champion 2009 football team

For the Boise State football program, the Fiesta Bowl is more than just an event.

To millions of fans across the country, the game was an introduction to the Broncos at the end of the 2006 season, when they used a series of timely trick plays to topple Oklahoma in overtime and become something more than that school from the small conference out west that played on a blue field.

On New Year’s Eve, the Fiesta Bowl will yet again serve as a stage for Boise State, which will take on Penn State in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals. With a win against the Nittany Lions, Heisman Trophy runner-up Ashton Jeanty and the Broncos will be one of four teams whose national title dreams will live on for at least another week.

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As Boise State rapidly ascended to the ranks of college football royalty this century, the Fiesta Bowl played an integral role, providing an occasional reminder of how far the Broncos had come.

While the victory on New Year’s Day in 2007 is the most memorable win in Boise State’s history — and one of the most famous games in modern college football history, to boot — it’s a different Fiesta Bowl game that marked an apex for Boise State.

Here’s a look back at the Broncos’ 2009 team and its win at the end of that season in the Fiesta Bowl:

Boise State football 2009

Boise State’s dramatic overtime win over Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl seemed as though it was ripped from the pages of a movie script, with the Broncos running an assortment of trick plays to pull even with the Sooners and eventually defeat them, with a Statue of Liberty play on a successful two-point conversion serving as the exclamation point. Running back Ian Johnson immediately proposing to his girlfriend after reaching the end zone untouched for the game-winning score only made it that much more of a Hollywood ending.

For Boise State, though, it was far from a final chapter to its story.

After a 10-3 finish in 2007, the Broncos did even better in 2008, putting together an undefeated regular season and rising as high as No. 9 in the Coaches Poll before losing to TCU in the Poinsettia Bowl.

They entered the following season with plenty of hope. Boise State lost nobody from its 2008 team to the NFL draft and was still quite young, with only four seniors on its roster. Nobody else at the FBS level had fewer than nine seniors.

With that came lofty expectations, with a No. 16 preseason ranking in the Coaches Poll, and a stiff early test — facing No. 14 Oregon in its first game under its offensive whiz of a new head coach, Chip Kelly.

The Broncos passed with flying colors. Against a major-conference opponent, Boise State overpowered the Ducks, out-gaining Oregon 361-152 while allowing just six first downs and 1.8 yards per carry in a 19-8 victory in which the Ducks’ only points came on a touchdown and two-point conversion late in the fourth quarter.

Fifteen years later, the game is still best known for what happened after the final whistle.

Heading into the season, Oregon standout running back LeGarrette Blount, referring to Boise State, told Sports Illustrated that Oregon “owed them an ass-whoopin” after the Broncos beat the Ducks 37-32 the previous season in Eugene, Oregon. His play didn’t back up the bold rhetoric. Blount embodied his team’s struggles in the 2009 loss, rushing eight times for -5 yards, which included being dropped for a safety.

As the teams met on the field after the game, Blount encountered Boise State linebacker Byron Hout, who tapped him on the shoulder pad and, according to Hout, said “How’d you like that ass-whoopin’?” Blount threw a punch, hitting Hout in his jaw. Immediately, it became a major national story, with Blount apologizing and ultimately getting suspended for much of the season.

“It’s just one of 13,” Boise State coach Chris Petersen said after the game. “...the bullseye is going to be on us.”

True to their coach’s words, Broncos didn’t slow down from there.

They went 13-0, extending their regular-season win streak to 25 games, and claimed the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) championship. They were dominant in reaching those marks, winning all but one of those 13 games by at least 10 points. Quarterback Kellen Moore finished seventh in Heisman Trophy voting and Petersen won the Paul “Bear” Bryant national coach of the year award after doing so three years earlier, making him the first two-time winner in the honor’s history.

After that run, one final, all-important hurdle awaited.

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Boise State-TCU Fiesta Bowl 2009

With an undefeated regular-season mark and a No. 6 spot in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings, the Broncos earned a trip back to the Fiesta Bowl three years after their iconic victory there at the end of the 2009 season.

This time, a different kind of foe awaited them.

Rather than Oklahoma, one of college football’s preeminent programs and historic powers, it was TCU, the undefeated Mountain West Conference champion and No. 4 team in the BCS, awaiting Boise State one year after many of the same players faced off in the Poinsettia Bowl.The pairing drew criticism, with some believing it to be disrespectful that two top-10 teams from outside the sport’s power structure had to face each other rather than get an opportunity at one of college football’s bigger brands.

What ensued on the field in Glendale, Arizona, though, was a physical, closely contested matchup between two of the country’s best teams that season.

Tied at 10 in the fourth quarter with about 10 minutes remaining, and staring at a 4th-and-nine from its own 33-yard line, Boise State pulled out some of the trickery that won the hearts of so many fans across the country three years earlier. After receiving the snap, Broncos punter Kyle Brotzman found wide-open tight end Kyle Efaw for a 29-yard gain and a first down. Four plays later, Doug Margin skied the end zone for a two-yard touchdown run that would be the game-winning score.

TCU marched down to the Boise State 30 with about 30 seconds remaining, but Winston Venable gave the Broncos their third interception of the day off Horned Frogs quarterback Andy Dalton to seal the victory and complete the unblemished season.

“This is unreal,” Venable said after the game. “...I’m pretty sure it’s not a dream. I’m going to enjoy this one.”

With the win, Boise State became just the second 14-0 team in FBS history, joining Ohio State from 2002. A total of 14 players from that team, including Moore and Martin, ended up making it to the NFL, a sign of the kind of talent Petersen was able to assemble and develop during his decorated eight-year run leading the program.

Following the Fiesta Bowl victory, the Broncos finished No. 4 in the Coaches Poll, their highest ever end-of-season ranking. With at least one more win, however, a new group of Boise State players, all of whom were young children in 2009, can stake a claim to being the best team in the program’s proud history.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Looking back at Boise State's undefeated, Fiesta Bowl champion 2009 football team