BOISE, Idaho — Merle and Ruth Baptiste have been Boise State season-ticket holders since 1974, when the Broncos were still competing in Division II. They were there when the program won a Division I-AA national championship in 1980, when it made its first bowl game, the Humanitarian Bowl, in 1999, and when it won its first BCS bowl in 2006.

On Friday night at chilly Albertson’s Stadium, they saw a new first: Boise State qualifying for a chance to play for major college football’s national championship. The Broncos’ 21-7 win over UNLV will earn No. 10 Boise State (12-1) an automatic berth in the first 12-team College Football Playoff.

“It’s about time,” Merle said. “We should have played for a (national) championship long before this, but we were disrespected by the big schools.”

There’s no overstating the significance of this moment, not just for Boise State but for college football. It’s a sport that has forever operated as a country club, offering lifetime membership for a Notre Dame or Alabama, while handing out visitor passes to a Tulane or Western Michigan. Back in the BCS days, the powers-that-be got dragged before Congress and threatened with antitrust scrutiny for so brazenly excluding half of the sport from its party.

A generation later, when the commissioners created the new 12-team Playoff, they finally saved a seat for the little guy. It’s fitting that the first Group of 5 program to take advantage was one of its original giant killers.

“We would have loved if there was a Playoff — we felt like we could have played with anyone,” said Jared Zabransky, quarterback for Boise State’s undefeated 2006 Fiesta Bowl team. “That’s the way it should have been for a long time. I’m just grateful these kids now get the opportunity to do that.”

Those kids, headlined by Heisman hopeful Ashton Jeanty, earned their second straight Mountain West championship Friday, with Jeanty breaking a 75-yard touchdown and notching his sixth 200-yard game of the season (209). Afterward, seemingly all 36,663 fans at sold-out Albertson’s Stadium swarmed onto the blue turf.

“Hope is powerful,” said Boise State athletic director Jeremiah Dickey. “You’ve seen it all year in terms of college football fans — when you provide more opportunity, it really ignites a fire.”

Boise State’s fans were so lit, they tore down the goal post and dumped it in the nearby Boise River. They’d been part of history. Never before had a Group of 5 team walked off its field knowing it was Playoff-bound. Even undefeated Cincinnati in 2021 couldn’t be certain until the committee rendered its final judgment.

“It’s such a big opportunity for all schools,” said Boise State coach Spencer Danielson. “As a competitor, all you want is a shot.”

Zabransky and Ian Johnson didn’t get their shot to play for a national championship despite finishing as the only undefeated team in the country that season. Neither did Kellen Moore and Doug Martin with their own 14-0 squad three years later. Dan Hawkins coached a Boise team in 2004 that went undefeated in the regular season and landed in the Liberty Bowl. Same thing in 2008 for an undefeated Chris Petersen team that finished up in the Poinsettia Bowl.

Danielson and Jeanty are the latest in a long line of coaches and players that drove Boise State’s decades-long evolution from junior college to lower-level NCAA school to FBS to national power. Back in the early 2010s, the Broncos were regularly beating the likes of Georgia, Oklahoma, Oregon and Virginia Tech. They reached three Fiesta Bowls, winning all three. But they never got the call to join a power conference like fellow BCS busters Utah and TCU.

Then the program plateaued for about a decade, still regularly winning 10 or 11 games a year and a few Mountain West championships, but never the kind of breakthrough season nationally like UCF had in 2017 and ’18 or Cincinnati in 2020 and ‘21. Both those, plus Houston, UCF and SMU, got their call-ups, too.

Just 13 months ago, Boise State was 5-5, in danger of suffering its first losing season since 1997, when Dickey made the surprising decision to fire third-year coach Andy Avalos, a former Broncos linebacker whose team had won 10 games a year earlier. Dickey promoted then 35-year-old defensive coordinator Danielson, while fully intending to make an outside hire after the season.

That is, until Danielson’s team won its next three games, reached the Mountain West Championship Game and upset UNLV, earning Danielson the full-time job.

With Jeanty returning following a 1,347-yard season, Boise was picked in the preseason to win its conference, but was hardly considered a front-runner to reach the CFP.  The Broncos did not appear in the AP poll for the first time until Sept. 22, a couple of weeks after going to Eugene and taking then seventh-ranked Oregon to the wire. By then Jeanty, who ran for 267 yards and six touchdowns in his team’s opener at Georgia Southern, had begun garnering early Heisman buzz. But surely there was little chance a Group of 5 running back would actually make it to New York.

Three months later, Jeanty just finished with more rushing yards in a regular season — 2,497 — than any player in history not named Barry Sanders. The only question now is whether it was enough to eclipse Colorado two-way sensation Travis Hunter for the trophy.

“He shows week in and week out he’s the best football player in the country,” said Danielson, “and I don’t think it’s even close.”

Jeanty is reason enough for Power 4 Playoff teams to be leery about drawing Boise State as their opponent. Barring a surprise move by the committee Sunday, the Broncos will likely earn a top-four seed and receive a bye to the quarterfinals. They would likely be placed in the Dec. 31 Fiesta Bowl for geographic reasons. Should Clemson upset SMU in the ACC championship, Boise may even move up to the No. 3 seed.

If they’re the No. 4 seed, it could create a fascinating matchup with the No. 5 seed, which will be either the loser of the Big Ten or SEC championship games, or 11-1 Notre Dame.

“Good luck to anyone who … thinks they’re going to win the game (against Boise State),” said UNLV coach Barry Odom. “I think they’re one of the best teams in college football right now, and I think they’ll do a great job representing this conference. They’re built to make a run.”

They’ve done it before. Boise was not nearly as respected a program as it is today when Zabransky handed off to Johnson on that famous Statue of Liberty play to knock off a peak-Bob Stoops Oklahoma team. The top-10 Virginia Tech team the Broncos beat in the 2010 season opener went on to win the ACC that season. The Georgia team they demolished in the 2011 season opener won 10 games and the SEC East.

But winning a College Football Playoff quarterfinal would be Boise State’s signature feat yet — the football equivalent of those early Gonzaga NCAA Tournament teams that helped build that program into a new-age blue blood.

“This team wanted to leave a legacy, where your actions have resounding effects for years to come,” said Danielson. “Standing on that podium, seeing Bronco Nation swarm the field, those are moments that can change everything.”

For Boise State, and for college football.

(Photo of Boise State coach Spencer Danielson: Loren Orr / Getty Images)