It’s been 15 years since Kellen Moore’s 45-0 thrashing of New Mexico on Senior Night, notably attended by FKWGHunter and a few (tens of) thousand others. Today, Kellen makes a grand return to the place that he molded to his own making and where the sweet memory of his prowess marks the #11 hash marks with orange.

Larger Than Life

Kellen Moore’s play on the field is not soon forgotten in this town. In some ways, it feels the 11′ foot statue built in his honor stands markedly short of who he was on the field. As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t publicly been back to a game since his illustrious career, but when Spencer Danielson talks of standing on the shoulders of giants, Kellen is chief among them.

I’m obviously aware I couldn’t be preaching more to the choir here, and yet, for all the lavish praise laid on Kellen Moore, I’m here bravely saying that I don’t think it’s enough. He’s the best to ever set foot on the most recognizable field in America. As a boy, I fought tooth and nail to get a #11 jersey on any sports team I played on. Rarely was I successful in that endeavor. The number eleven was our city. Who wouldn’t want to be Kellen the Giant Slayer?

The first road game in his career was a trip to Autzen. There, he silenced the ranked Oregon Ducks, the last time any non-conference foe has done so. A win that, for many, might be considered signature. Upon further review of his career, the upset was little more than a footnote in his mythology. Those big wins were just who he was.

On Winning

Kellen would conquer the Ducks again in ’09, this time thoroughly so, in what was the biggest game ever on the Blue. He then led the Broncos to topple #3 TCU for another Fiesta Bowl trophy, back when the powers that be were terrified of what either team would do to a “name-brand.” His following act, kicking off the 2010 season, was leading the comeback drive against #10 Virginia Tech in a ‘neutral’ game in DC. A team, once known to slay giants with gimmicks and tricks became giants themselves. By 2011, only the most devout power conference truthers were surprised when Moore eviscerated the Georgia Bulldogs in Atlanta.

While it’s easy to talk of the peaks of his career, it is the consistent heights that might be more impressive. He didn’t just show up for the “big” games. Unfortunately for the Fresno and Utah States of the world, Kellen didn’t play in any small games. Week in and out he’d batter WAC foes with 40 point showings in the first half, earning him a second-half vacation. Can you imagine what kind of records he’d have if he actually had to play second halves? Or if the team wasn’t in the lead all the time? He might have ended with every single QB record…

Kellen Moore was the despair of college defenses. Can you even really fathom 50 wins? He’s the winningest college quarterback, ever. They were giving Quarterbacks 7 seasons after COVID and they couldn’t sniff 50 wins! Do you realize how psychotic you have to be to do what he did every single night?? In his career he had 3 losses by a combined 5 points. We will simply never see anything like that again. It strains credulity that one player could do so much.

What Made Him So Good?

Since I’ve moved away from Boise, I’ve met actual real-life human beings that never knew what it was like to watch Kellen Moore. And they all ask me—What Made Him So Good?

On paper, the question is hard to answer. Most short quarterbacks make up for deficiencies with elite scrambling ability and cannons for arms. Kellen was, well, respectfully (respectfully!), horribly slow. Probably the slowest quarterback I’ve ever seen. I suppose he did have a couple long throws, but I’m not sure that even the most partisan among us would describe it as a cannon arm.

So then how did he lead a team of under-recruited and under-appreciated players to Mount Everests that no one with their budget line had ever reached? I’ve wondered about that my whole life. Most people would say it’s because Kellen Moore was “deadly accurate”. He was “cerebral”. He’d throw that sucker seconds before the play was even open. He would know where the defender was supposed to be better than the defender knew where they were supposed to be!

I know all that but I also know that Kellen Moore isn’t the first smart quarterback to ever play the game. Smart isn’t binary of course, but it’s hard to impress upon the mind how difficult it is to be perfect (as my recollection says), or even near-perfect (as those lying statisticians say). To play at that high a level at all times in all venues is flabbergasting. If it was that easy to win all those games, why hasn’t anyone else done it like that?

Caveats

I know by now I’ve reached writing that has ventured far into gratuitous nostalgia. What couldn’t I say as a boy who grew up watching a giant? But what I want to say is that I don’t think you appreciate enough who Kellen Moore was. Because every little kid could grow up watching him play and see someone who didn’t look remotely the part of an elite football player and watch him conquer the whole world in the name of their people. And you’d have to think, “What’s out there that I couldn’t do?” What can you say about the man who embodied the ethos of a team that became the ethos of an entire city?

How does it change a city when its people grow up to believe, in the deepest recesses of their soul, that no matter the disadvantage, victory is not merely a possibility, but an inevitability? That, at the most fundamental unit of every thought, that winning is who and what they are. And that winning is not arrogance, or victory over another, but victory over the self. That sacrifice is always required. That your community demands your whole being and demands that you don’t retreat into your individual self, but that you give everything back to those who will go after you. That your dying breath is laying another brick on a legacy you may never see.

You watch the way the city and school has grown and it’s obvious the two are inseparably intertwined. Boise, Idaho is special. Its team is special. It’s been that way every breath of every day of my life. Every year, someone new comes up and claims to be the next Boise State, and it’s because they believe that being Boise State is about reaching a peak. To be a Bronco is to live full time in the highest mountains. To live every day with precious little oxygen and to constantly–ridiculously–have dreams that defy sanity. They can’t do what we do because truthfully, it’s insane to think you can be the best with what we have.

But that’s how we live. That’s all we’ve ever known. Winning is in the air I breathed every day in that town and it courses through the veins of that community. And that’s crazy because on paper, most of us weren’t born special. (Statistically so!) All that and it’s no surprise that our extremely special, extraordinary, once-in-an-absolute lifetime player, was, like our city, someone that didn’t look the part. Looks can be deceiving.

Boise is Kellen’s city. It’s impossible to ignore the incredible cast of people who deserve a large share of credit for the success they brought in Kellen’s time, but #11 stands alone at the peak. The best to ever step foot in our state, not because of what he was born with, but because of who he was. There is nothing on that field that he didn’t give. On his sleeve he put his heart, and on his back he put the city that called him son. Right next to that #11.

Welcome home, Kellen.

Author