“You have been called to this kingdom for such a time as this.” — Esther 4:13-14.
GLENDALE, Ariz. — He stood in the empty locker room at State Farm Stadium, trying to make sense of it all. The loss, the end of a unique season. The sudden finality.
But Boise State coach Spencer Danielson couldn’t stop evangelizing.
It’s so much more than proving you belong after a closer than it looked 34-14 loss to Penn State in the College Football Playoff. This is about proving what you’re doing works — even if it doesn’t fit in a now cash-based sport quickly losing its soul.
“We’re different,’ Danielson said. ‘What we are doing here is not happening in college football.”
Now he’s getting lathered up. Now, after inviting USA TODAY Sports to spend the weekend with his team to see their process of equal parts coaching, development, accountability, and yes, love, the unraveling of college football is coming into focus.
He can’t hold back anymore.
“You’ve got coaches and programs and administrations that now have golden handcuffs. They’re beholden to the money,” Danielson said. “They’ve changed what they believe to win games. They don’t want to, but everyone else is doing it. So what choice do they have?”
He pauses and runs his hands through his neatly brushed hair. He’s 36, and has been a head coach for all of 13 months, but believes deeply that he has been called to this moment, with this program.
There’s a plan for everyone, he says. When it’s placed so plainly in front of you, there’s no alternative.
“Once you do that, once you change what you believe as a coach and a person,” Danielson continues, “You can never go back. Because you’ll have to change everything.”
Making sense of where college football is headed
Someone has to say it, he says. Someone has to make sense of where college football is headed.
It would’ve had a much greater impact had Boise State not fallen apart in the fourth quarter after closing to a three-point deficit. A much greater impact after SEC big spenders Alabama and South Carolina – whining for the last month about missing the CFP – were embarrassed in bowl games.
As it is, it’s hard to ignore what has happened in 13 short months since Danielson was first named interim coach and eventually head coach at Boise State. They’ve won back-to-back Mountain West Conference championships for the first time in school history, and returned to national relevance for the first time in a decade. They earned a top four seed in the College Football Playoff, and the first-round bye that goes with it.
They had a Heisman Trophy runner-up in star tailback Ashton Jeanty, who came within 27 yards of Barry Sanders’ immortal single-season rushing record of 2,628 yards. Jeanty, like Boise State, proved he deserved to be on the big stage, too — rushing for 104 tough yards on 30 carries against the No. 6 rush defense in the nation.
Long after the game, Penn State coach James Franklin found Jeanty as he walked from the Broncos’ locker room. He reached out and grabbed Jeanty’s hand and held tight.
“I love the way you play, man,” Franklin said. “I love what you’re about, and how you carry yourself. We need more like you in our game.”
Ashton Jeanty part of different college football model
This is real and tangible, everyone. A direct reflection of investing emotionally and physically over financially, and laying out a clear path to success on and off the field.
Or the exact opposite of the current model.
Make no mistake, this isn’t about refusing to pay players. Boise State found a way to pay Jeanty what it could through its collective — but only after Jeanty turned down a $1 million dollar-plus deal from multiple Power Four conference schools.
He told USA TODAY Sports in October that he left “a lot” of money on the table because he was invested in Boise State, “and they were invested in developing me, the player and the person.”
There’s no disconnect here. Danielson, like about every other coach, believes players deserve their fair share. It’s just that money and free player movement has dismantled the longstanding ideal of developing players and young men.
The idea of earning has been replaced by giving. And while some programs are flourishing, more and more are struggling because they’ve gotten away from what made them unique in the first place.
Now we have players suing coaches and collectives for broken deals, and collectives refusing to pay players who don’t perform or refuse to play.
Nick Saban, the greatest coach in the sport’s history, left Alabama after last season because he was sick of it. If he’s over it, what does it say about the rest of the sport?
More to the point, what does it say about Boise State and the program Danielson has built — that the Broncos were in a one possession game with mighty Penn State late in the third quarter of a playoff game, and nearly pulled the unthinkable again?
Or that after Penn State pulled away and won, Boise State stayed on the field together for 20 minutes, eventually running a lap around the stadium – every player – to thank their fans. That just doesn’t happen anywhere else.
Not long after that and during the post-game press conference, the reality of what was built against the strong headwinds of free-flowing NIL cash came into clear focus. There was star defensive lineman Ahmed Hassanein, who left a difficult home life in Cairo, Egypt, and eventually found his way to Boise State because his brother knew Danielson from their time together at Azusa Pacific College.
At halftime, with Boise State trailing 17-7, he stood in the middle of the locker room screaming, “This is ain’t no Cinderella story. We deserve to be here. This will not be my last game here.”
Now the end of his time at Boise State had set in, and it was crushing.
“Coach D,” Hassanein said, his voice halting through tears, “You saved my life. I want everyone to know that. You saved my life. I love you.”
Boise State culture is king
This journey began in November of 2023, when Boise State athletic director Jeremiah Dickey fired coach Andy Avalos and made Danielson the interim coach.
Danielson walked into the team meeting room at Boise State, a hundred desperate faces hanging on his every word. The Broncos had five losses and a slim chance to reach the Mountain West championship game, and who in the world would blame both coaches and players for focusing on individual futures?
“He said give me two weeks. That’s it, two weeks,” Jeanty said. “Grown men finish what they’ve started, and we don’t know where this thing will end.”
They’ve won 15 of 18 games since, including a three-point loss to Oregon in September, the loss to Penn State, and a loss to UCLA in a meaningless bowl game where Boise State played a quarterback who hadn’t thrown a college pass.
We’re nearly 13 months into it, and it hasn’t ended ― it’s growing despite the inherent financial disadvantages for Group of Five schools. Despite a program still in chase mode.
Because after all of those other power conference schools fail in the CFP and bowl games, they’re reloading with deep-pocket NIL collectives and the lure of playing in mega television games week after week.
They’re signing talent and changing what they do to make it fit, searching for some form of chemistry within the delicate dance of juggling individual NIL deals and personalities that may or may not be counterproductive.
By the time the season begins again in the fall of 2025, pay for play will likely have arrived in college football. The NCAA has agreed to a salary pool of an estimated $20 million per team — for those programs that can afford it.
For those that can’t, there’s only one fallback position. And you can’t miss.
“I still believe culture is king,” Dickey said. “As we professionalize our sport, I’m watching these other teams and how much money they have and the value of their franchises, they’re not always winning. It leads me back to culture, and our culture is Spencer.”
The right fit
This is how it works at the Group of Five level, when the travel budget is tight and larger conference comforts are a pipe dream for a critical conference game.
It’s mid-November in Laramie, Wyoming, and it’s cold and wet and there’s nothing fancy about it. Just a crummy Holiday Inn with no meeting space, and a team rolling in late because of travel delays.
Needless to say, Boise State wasn’t breaking routine.
The important Friday walk through, one last chance to get on the same page and zero in on the game plan, happened in the Holiday Inn parking lot. Ice on the ground, and –get this – no lights.
“Doesn’t matter. Just put the ball down, man,” said Boise State guard Ben Dooley. “Put the ball down and let us play.”
There’s nothing pampered and sheltered about this program, or its players. Nothing that screams me over we.
You’re not going to find these guys on the Hot 100 recruiting board, or the best players available in the transfer portal. They just fit the mold of what Danielson is looking for, and are then developed into elite college players. Some into NFL talent.
It’s players like Hassanein, who started playing football as a sophomore in high school and just needed an opportunity. Danielson, the Boise State defensive coordinator before being named head coach, signed him and developed him — and Hassanein had 23 sacks in the last two seasons, and will more than likely be a mid-round selection in the NFL draft.
It’s nose guard Herbert Gums, who had LSU, Arkansas and Missouri trying to sign him as a running back after a big junior season in high school, only to pull away after he gained weight to play defensive line. There was no better interior defensive lineman in the MWC this season, and he’ll be on someone’s NFL camp roster next summer.
It’s quarterback Maddux Madsen, whose father named him after major league pitcher Greg Maddux — and it couldn’t be more fitting. Madsen is listed as 5-feet-10, 203 pounds, and he’s an inch shy and a suitcase short of those numbers.
He doesn’t have the strongest arm or the most dynamic ability (hello, Greg Maddux), and if he shaved an admittedly cheesy mustache, he’d look like the 15-year-old down the street who mows your lawn. But he’s a baby-faced assassin on the field: a tough and fearless gamer, and the perfect compliment to Jeanty.
He threw three interceptions against Penn State, matching his season total. He was inconsolable in the locker room afterward, a towel draped over his head and face.
“We’re not here without you,” Jeanty told him. “We win and lose together.”
A light on the hill
An hour before kickoff, Danielson walked through the locker room and said he was going to pray on the field. Anyone who was interested was welcome.
Some joined, some stayed in the locker room.
It’s a controversial option within his program, and he knows it. He’s a believer, and he’d walk away tomorrow if he was told he couldn’t speak about his faith to those who wanted to hear it.
Earlier this summer, Jeanty asked Danielson to officiate his baptism. Not long after that, a group of players showed up at Danielson’s office and asked the same.
So they walked down two flights of stairs to the field access at Albertson’s Stadium, and walked across the street and into the Boise River.
“He and I talk about that a lot,” Dickey said. “For so long, I tended to hide who I was in this industry. I’m not going to do that, and I don’t want him to do that. It’s not force-fed, he’s not loading up the bus and driving players to church. I told Spencer I’ve sold my soul long enough in life that I’m not going to operate in fear around something so important to me.”
They gathered together on the field minutes after the loss to Penn State. The confetti was flying and the Lions were celebrating and everything they worked so hard for was happening for someone else.
“You guys are so much more than this moment,” Danielson said. “Never settle for less. We’ve established a standard. We will be the light on the hill.”
An hour later, the locker room was clearing and the journey was officially over. For now.
The start of the new season with offseason workouts is days away.
“Wipe those tears off your face,” cornerback Jeremiah Earby said aloud. “We’re going back to work.”
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.