(Before you even ask, yes, it’s a slow news night.)
Record-wise, Boise State has been one of the top football programs in the country since the turn of the century.
Two years from now, and thanks to a little push from Stanford, they’ll have a football complex befitting their transformation from quirky Cinderella to yearly BcS bowl contender.
By way of the Idaho Statesman, athletic director Gene Bleymaier told a Boise radio station during an interview Thursday that he hopes to have the football complex, a project championed heavily by head coach Chris Petersen, completed before the start of the 2013 season. Per the Statesman, the complex will include football offices, a locker room, training room, equipment room, weight room and likely some administrative offices.
The plan to pour a total of more than $100 million into the football program was first announced by Bleymaier last August. While the football complex will be a big part of the move to bring the Broncos into the 21st century, it will also include a stadium expansion that will push Bronco Stadium’s capacity from 33,500 to 53,000.
The complex, though, has been near and dear to Petersen’s heart. And Stanford’s push for the coach after Jim Harbaugh left for the NFL sparked a renewed “urgency” to getting started on a project whose momentum has seemingly lagged since the announcement five months ago.
“It was a priority before the Stanford situation came up, but that certainly accentuated it and created even more of an urgency,” Bleymaier told KTIK. “That got us to a point where we committed to a timeline.”
The athletic department, the Statesman writes, will ask the State Board of Education next month for permission to begin planning and design work for the project.