Boise State and Idaho hate each other? Who knew!?!

In the history of recorded time, a university president has never called out another school the way Boise State’s Bob Kustra called out Idaho. Here’s his response to an article from the Argonaut, the Idaho student newspaper:

“This is a great example of why my wife and I no longer travel to Moscow games,” Kustra said. “It’s a culture that is nasty, inebriated and civilly doesn’t give our fans the respect that any fan should expect when visiting an away team. … I don’t think at Boise State you’re going to find that, so for me personally, when I read what Pete said I knew, I knew.”

“For me, this is not about football. For me, this is a cultural issue. It’s about fans having to learn how to treat other fans and universities. What bothers me more than anything else, is that the fans are not about denigrating our athletic program. … What bothers me personally is the denigration of our academic programming. That’s what I simply can’t tolerate.”

“I’ve seen rivalries all over America, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, Texas-Texas A&M, Kansas-Kansas State, but you can go inside those rivalries and you’ll find all kinds of slams and digs and whatever, but I’ve never seen the nastiness aimed at the quality of our academic program that I find here in Idaho from the University of Idaho Vandals and as long as that goes on, why would I want to encourage a game where people don’t know how to act like grownups?” (Idaho Statesman)

Damn, I had no idea that Idaho and Boise State had this level of animosity toward one another.  But Kustra’s being more than just a little naive about how other rivals in the college sports world treat each other.  When Alabama and Auburn fans get together, EVERYTHING is fair game.  His head would spin if he were president of either one of those fine institutions.

But can you imagine if Kustra were Georgia Tech’s president and he made those comments about Georgia? Or if he was the top guy at Florida and implied that FSU had an inferior football culture?  He’d need a permanent security detail for the rest of his life.

In terms of the actual on the field rivalry between Kustra’s school and the drunken bastards up in Moscow, there’s actually not much of one lately.  Since Idaho notched a 36-35 overtime win in 1998, Boise State has won the last 11 games in the series.  Average score in those games?  51-18.

Not only has Kustra chimed in from the Boise side, but so has Bronco head football coach Chris Peterson.  Here’s what he had to say about the rivalry during the WAC football media preview:

“Why would we (go to Moscow)?” he said. “I don’t think our fans even like to go up there. Most of Idaho’s fans are in Boise anyway.” (Idaho Statesman)

Now that Boise State is leaving the WAC and joining the Mountain West, the game against Idaho won’t automatically appear on Boise’s schedule.  In 2011, the two sides won’t play because Boise is already booked solid.

After that, the two schools could get right back to playing each other…but what does Boise have to gain from that?  From a financial standpoint (which is what drives college football these days), a trip to Moscow to play Idaho doesn’t benefit Boise at all.

With just a hair over 16,000 permanent seats, Idaho’s Kibbie Dome is the smallest venue in all of FBS.  With that in mind, Peterson’s comments make a little more sense.  I don’t think the coach is saying he wants ties to be completely severed, he’d just like it better if Idaho made the trip to Boise every year.

As it stands, Bronco Stadium doubles the capacity of the Kibbie Dome, and plans are in the works to increase capacity to around 50,000 in the not too distant future.  With the facility as the game’s permanent host, Idaho could be the designated home team in alternate years and a majority of seats could be given over to its fans.

That’s if Kustra and the powers that be at Boise State even want to keep the series going.  In terms of recruiting, it would probably benefit his school’s football program a lot more if Idaho were dumped in favor of out of conference games that would provide more exposure (home-and-home deals with Pac-10 schools, road games against Big 12 schools, etc.)

And the very thought of having Vandal fans outnumber Bronco fans every other year in his own stadium is probably hateful to Kustra.  In the first year of such an arrangement, the postgame scene would probably be a hundred times more chaotic than anything LaGarrette Blount could generate.