Boise State Is the CFP Outlier Doing ‘More With Less’

The Boise State Broncos will make history on New Year’s Eve as the first Group of 5 program to appear in the 12-team College Football Playoff. Even more impressive, the Broncos earned a first-round bye, ranking above Big 12 champion Arizona State and ACC champion Clemson.

The Broncos, who hail from the Mountain West, have pulled off a remarkable feat given their lack of resources compared to power conference counterparts, from athletic department budgets to media-rights revenue. 

“We are blue-collar,” athletic director Jeramiah Dickey told Front Office Sports Tuesday. “The Broncos have always done more with less, and we are proud of who we are. We don’t have what everyone else has, but we’re not here to cry over spilled milk. We’re here to make the most of this opportunity and go buy a new cow.”

The Broncos’ CFP quarterfinal opponent, Penn State, boasts an athletic department budget of around $200 million per year, ranking in the top ten of any public school in the FBS division, according to USA Today. As part of those earnings, the Nittany Lions enjoy a cut of the biggest conference media-rights contract in history: the Big Ten’s mid-$7 billion package with Fox, CBS, and NBC. Head coach James Franklin rakes in $8.5 million per year, the 14th-highest salary in college football.

The Broncos don’t even crack the top 60 athletic department budgets and earn between $50 million and $60 million in recent seasons. The Mountain West’s media deal with Fox and CBS pays between $35 million and $40 million per year, according to the most recently available tax returns—offering less than $4 million per school. Head coach Spencer Danielson is making $1.1 million this year.

“I’m not the guy that’s looking at what everybody else has from money or facilities or whatever,” Danielson told reporters on Dec. 23. “We have more than enough to be successful and play our best in these games coming forward.” 

But he did note that, in the future, the team will need more: “If you look at the games and the teams we have to beat at Boise State? Like, we gotta push the needle on our staff salaries. We gotta push the needle on the collective and the NIL space for our players. They deserve it. That’s something I’m very open about because we have the resources in this community.” (While NIL collectives often don’t publicize how much, many power conference teams have more money than Group of 5 programs.)

Danielson added, however, that Dickey was aligned on these goals. The athletic department has had conversations about a new contract for Danielson, and the school plans to build a $300 million “athletics village.”

Dickey has also launched an effort at Boise State to prepare for the upcoming revenue-sharing era if the House v. NCAA settlement proposal is implemented in 2025. The Broncos plan to participate in revenue sharing, and are building out an entire new department for salary cap management purposes.

But for now, Boise State is focused on notching its first-ever CFP win. The team boasts a top-ten ranking and a Heisman finalist in running back Ashton Jeanty, though they’re still double-digit underdogs.

“These games and moments are great for us to show everyone that our football program, our entire athletic department, and all of Bronco Nation are elite,” Dickey says. “And they put in a lot of work to earn this opportunity to be on the biggest stage and represent something bigger than ourselves.”