Boise State football is one of the most consistent brands in all of college football and in 2026 this proud program is stepping into a reborn Pac-12, celebrating the 40th anniversary of its iconic blue turf, and doing it all under a head coach who has spent a decade with Boise State.
Welcome to the latest episode of THE DAWN, where Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson sat down to talk about what this new chapter means, and why he believes Boise State was built for this moment.
Coach Danielson grew up in Southern California watching the Pac-10 turn into the Pac-12, and he watched Boise State from a distance before he ever set foot on the blue turf. Now in his tenth season with the program, he called the move into the new Pac-12 an exciting time for West Coast football and a natural homecoming for a fan base that always felt like it belonged in that conversation.
The coaching lineage at Boise State is not lost on Coach Danielson with names like Dirk Koetter, Dan Hawkins and Chris Petersen setting the foundation for excellence on the blue turf. He called it the most humbling experience of his life to lead a program with that lineage.
On the new conference, Coach Danielson praised the coaching talent across the league and called this first year just the starting point. He argued the champion of the new Pac-12 deserves a spot in the College Football Playoff regardless of a perfect record, noting that Boise State and its peers are not ducking marquee non-conference games, opening with programs like Oregon and Washington instead of padding schedules.
For Coach Danielson, all of it traces back to a culture he sums up in two words: built different. Not just because Boise State plays its home games on the only blue field in the country, but because the program is chasing transformation over transactions. He talked about developing players in every facet and pointed to Ashton Jeanty, who had chances to leave and chose to stay, as proof the culture is real and not just a recruiting pitch.
It is fitting, then, that this 40th anniversary season on the blue turf will forever carry the fingerprints of two players who embodied that mindset. Ashton Jeanty and Kellen Moore will have their numbers permanently placed on the hash marks of the blue field, a tribute Coach Danielson calls a reflection of two humble pillars who helped build Boise State into what it is today, and a fitting bookend for a program stepping into its next era with the same identity that got it here.
THE DAWN debuted July 1 across the Pac-12’s YouTube and Pac-12 Insider, the league’s 24/7 FAST channel. The series culminates with a finale featuring never-before-seen behind-the-scenes content from the building of this new league. It drops in August, right before the season kicks off.
