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AFM Magazine


AFM’s FBS Coach of the Year: Boise State’s Chris Petersen

by: David Purdum
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Chemistry is so much more than just a cliché at Boise State. In fact, according to head coach Chris Petersen, chemistry is “as important as anything we do here.”
“I think we have all been on those teams where we’ve had a lot of talent, but haven’t done well for one reason or another,” said Petersen, American Football Monthly’s FBS Coach of the Year. “We’ve also all probably had the opportunity to be on a team that didn’t have a lot of talent, but did very well together. You remember that team, and it’s one of the most rewarding experiences of your playing days and/or coaching days. That’s what it’s all about. Just being that unified a team. That band of brothers, that family. That’s when it becomes, to me, what sports are all about.”
Fresh off of leading the Broncos to an undefeated season and their second BCS bowl victory in three years, Petersen visited with American Football Monthly about the chemistry behind his program, his improved running game, managing stress, the BCS and, yes, where he comes up with those trick plays.

You went undefeated this past season yet were excluded from the BCS title game. Was it disappointing?

We take the philosophy here not to get caught up in the BCS. We have a smile on our faces with regards to the BCS process and always want to be prepared to compete. I feel the process is slowly changing and we’re getting more and more opportunities. We feel like progress is being made all the time. Seven to ten years ago there was very little discussion about non-automatic qualifying teams making it to BCS games, and now teams like ourselves, Utah, TCU and Hawai’i are getting there on a regular basis and winning some of those games. The conversations and perceptions are changing and it’s going to get better.

For the 2010 season you have 21 of 22 offensive and defensive starters returning. If you go undefeated, do you feel you’ll have the opportunity to play in the BCS Championship Game?

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If we’re mentioned in that regard, we’ll deal with it at that time. Next year we have the hardest schedule we’ve ever had. We don’t really discuss that topic, but just being mentioned in the conversation is a compliment for our program. In visiting with our team, our discussions have always been to take it one game at a time and, if you’re successful, things will work for the better. We feel real progress is being made for the non-BCS schools.

One of the first things you did after becoming head coach was to rearrange the locker room. Your tight end Richie Brockel said that move did wonders for the team’s unity. Why was something as simple as moving lockers around so effective for your team?

When it first came up, that we were going to move the locker room around, nobody liked it. Nobody wanted any part of it. And I just said let’s just try it for this year and if everybody is still not good with it we can always go back. But by the end of the year, it was a consensus that everybody was good with it.
When you have 105 guys on your team in five different classes, just because you show up to practice every day does not mean you are going to know each other. You can go through your career and you may know the guys in your class fairly well, but you may not know the guys in the class above you or below you or certainly not two or more classes away. So our goal – and it doesn’t matter what position, what age, what class – what we really want is family.

Your biggest area of statistical improvement came in the running game. You averaged 35 yards more per game this season compared to last. That’s nearly a 35 percent increase. What do you attribute that improvement to?

We had a new line last year and most of those guys came back, so familiarity with the system certainly helps things. Secondly, we simplified things this year and threw out some runs that we didn’t use a whole lot. We just wanted to concentrate on getting better at a few things as opposed to watering down the whole program, while trying to work on everything at once. For us to be successful on offense, running the ball is very much a part of who we want to be.

You received so much notoriety for your trick plays that it has to get more and more difficult to surprise opponents with them. Yet, you guys keep having success. Take us through the process your staff goes through pinpointing and developing possible plays.

Honestly, very little of what we come up with around here is original thinking. Most of these things come from somebody else. It’s usually on video tape of some kind, whether it be an opponent we play or an opponent of an opponent or a high school tape. If somebody sees something that’s interesting or creative, we’re studying that.
Whether it was ten years ago or last month, we’ve seen somebody execute some version of that play. Now, we might put our own spin on it but that always gets us going.
Honestly, it’s really a small part of what we do. It’s less than one percent of our whole package. But we know our opponent is working against all these different things. So we are always interested in breaking something out that maybe they have not seen. Seldom do we break out the same deceptive play in the same year. We may but not very often.

According to Brockel, you used the fake punt that you used against TCU in the Fiesta Bowl earlier in the season.

We did but it was a little bit different than before. The formation was a little different. You are always tweaking things, so it does not look the same to them. It can look the same to the coaches, but it doesn’t look the same to the 11 guys that matter out on the field.
I think it comes back to creativity. We just really want creativity to be a part of our program. We want to be able to think outside of the box. We really just feel that those things have a high percentage chance of working together, and when they do, they’re either going to get us points or a lot of yards.

With Urban Meyer’s health issues, stress has really come to the forefront in the coaching profession. Please share a little about your time management and things you do to control your stress level, and that of your staff and team.

I am surprised at how long it took for this to come to the forefront. It’s just a stressful environment that we live in. I think it is really important that we pay attention to having as much balance in our lives as possible. One of the main problems is, when you get into that new season, there just is not any balance; it’s football 24/7. I think it’s very important somehow that you not make it football 24/7. You have to have some time to exercise and to see your family.
I make sure we’re not spending ridiculous amounts of time in the football office. We’re going to spend a lot of time, all coaches do, but it doesn’t need to be over the top. You’ve got to make some decisions. The thing that makes it harder now is all the computers we have and all the data we can get. There’s just always something more to look at. You’ve got to put some time frames on things and say we’re going to have this done by this time and be done and make our decisions and move forward.

I read that you always wear the same hat for games, unless you lose. So did you hold up that superstition this year and end up after the Fiesta Bowl with the same hat you wearing in the opener against Oregon?

Absolutely.

Will that hat start the 2010 season?

Well, sometimes you have to start fresh, but … I guess that’s one of the stressful decisions I’ll have to make this summer. p






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