[Vision2020] BJC

[Tom Hansen]

Copied and pasted below is a posting submitted to the Vandal listserve by
Peter Soeth, a Vandal alum residing "down there" (boise).

Thanks, Peter.

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How to taunt a Boise State football fan

Scoff if you must at the blue turf in Boise State University's Bronco
Stadium. Say what you will about our state capital's goofy obsession with
the color orange, or even let the term "football factory" slip into your
conversation about Idaho's largest university.

Just don't utter the initials "BJC."

BJC stands for Boise Junior College, the forerunner of BSU. Although that
name hasn't been on the school's front door since 1965, it still has
remarkable resonance for friends and alumni of Big Blue.

"BJC" lays open an inferiority complex that, despite BSU's 19,000 students,
Fiesta Bowl championship and national reputation, is never far below the
surface.

See, by the time Boise Junior College became a four-year school, the
University of Idaho was already 73 years old. Idaho State University was 63.

So, well into the 1990s - even after Boise State won its first national NCAA
Division I-AA football championship in 1980 - Vandal fans who grew bored or
incensed at BSU-Idaho games were prone to chant "BJC, BJC!" I was at a
Bronco-Vandal game in Boise during the '80s when they nearly provoked an
British soccer-style riot.

Bill Hall, legendary editorial writer for the Lewiston Morning Tribune in
northern Idaho, used to refer to BSU as "Bronco State." That stings.

But why does it bug friends of Boise State so much? Because it suggests a
lack of academic legitimacy - and don't-know-your-place social climbing -
that will persist no matter how many Rhodes Scholars BSU turns out.

See, it's common in America for the state capital to have the state's
largest university - Ohio State, the University of Washington, the
University of Minnesota, the University of New Mexico, the University of
Texas-Austin, the University of Nebraska, North Carolina State, the
University of Kentucky, to name a few. But before BJC became Boise College
in 1965, Boise was one of just five state capitals in the country -
including Carson City, Nev.; Montpelier, Vt.; Augusta, Maine, and Pierre,
S.D. - without a four-year school.

Let's just say that folks in Moscow and Pocatello were amused by Boise's
presumption when it finally arrived.

They can't do that anymore, of course. But they can still be snarky about
it.

The last time BSU and ISU played a football game, in 2003, the Broncos won
62-0. I was in Bronco Stadium long after most of the crowd left.

In the third quarter, I walked down to the concession stand for a cup of
coffee with BSU leading 47-0. On the way back to my seat, I passed the
section reserved for Bengal faithful.

There was just one guy left, a fellow about my age. He was wearing an ISU
stocking cap, with a Bengal scarf wrapped around his throat. He was holding
one of those oversized foam fingers indicating "No. 1" - colored black and
orange of course.

And the lettering on his tattered gray sweatshirt read "BJC."

Moral victories, I guess, are better than no victories at all.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"People who ridicule others while hiding behind anonymous monikers in
chat-room forums are neither brave nor clever."

- Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch (August 21, 2007)