Pete silences team

Silence is a virtue. In the case of Boise State football, silence may now be a game plan. Earlier this week BSU Head Football Coach Chris Petersen made an announcement that BSU players will not be conducting interviews with opposing team’s media this season.

The request comes in the wake of BSU’s first road game of the season at the University of Washington. Petersen said he doesn’t intend for the silence to be a center of attention. In fact, its main intent is to avoid giving the opposition any unnecessary motivation.

“To me, nothing is really ever going to come good out of that situation,” Petersen said. “You know, some player says something that they didn’t really mean like that and then they take it out of context and its on their bulletin board. That’s really how we think of those things a lot. You go, ‘that’s not really what I meant to say’.”

The request could be due to the fact that Petersen is working with a number of young, rising stars. He said that the team has experienced situations where unnecessary comments to visiting reporters have come back to bite the Broncos in the end.

“I think it was my first year here,” Petersen said. “We played La Tech and one of the players made a comment like, ‘well now we’ve got all of our tough games behind us’, to ‘Sports Illustrated.’ They had it all over the locker room and of course La Tech beat us.”

Paranoid? Maybe. Careful? Definitely. And with a big preseason match up against the up-and-coming Huskies on the horizon, Petersen can’t be too careful in the teams preparation.

“The other thing is these kids have so many demands on their time,” Petersen said. “We get them interview times with [the media]. They’ve got school. It’s just another thing they’ve got to add to their plate. If we can try and simplify their lives a little bit, which is very hard this time of year, then we want to do it.”
Coach Petersen’s policy won’t apply to local media but will extend through the end of this season. And if fans think it’s an extreme move stemming from last season’s Fiesta Bowl win – think again.

“We’re just trying to focus on ourselves,” Petersen said. “If we didn’t go to a bowl game we’d have the same policy.”

Jake Garcin

Related Posts:

1. The football team leaves on business
2. Coach Pete leaves many questions about Bronco football in 2009 unanswered
3. Ten things Charlie Weis can learn from Coach Pete
4. Football team announces recruiting class
5. Beat Pete 5K hits it big