Boise State Faces Oregon In College Football's Week 1 Showdown

Well, it’s here…The 2026 college football season starts this Saturday.

It’s an exciting time, no doubt. Boise State’s Week 1 matchup against Oregon is just a few short days away, and should be a great benchmark to see what the Broncos are really made of.

The college football season is a long and winding road. Stories of generational upsets, total collapses and everything in between befall us each and every year. Even Boise State has had its fair share of ups and downs throughout the years, leading to varying levels of success, depending on how you define that.

Before Week 1 kicks off this Saturday in Oregon, let's take this chance to have a self-induced reality-check. Here’s a few ways to define what success looks like for the 2026 Boise State football team, beyond the usual malaise of conference championships and ‘would-be’ victories over Power 4 programs.

Oregon

We all knew this was coming …

Oregon enters the 2026 season as the No. 2-ranked team in the country, just behind Ohio State. Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson said himself that he thinks the Ducks are, “the best team in the country.”

Oregon head coach Dan Lanning’s response to that evaluation was reminiscent of Kobe Bryant’s, “job’s not done,” mantra.

“It’s way too early to say that,” Lanning said in a press conference.

Humble, no doubt, but Lanning’s team is on the short list of teams that are capable of winning a chip in 2026. For Boise State, a successful trip to Autzen Stadium doesn’t have to be a win, though it would be nice.

Danielson’s eyes are set on a ‘W’ in week one, of course, but he also spoke about what success looks like this week, regardless of the game’s result.

“The only thing I evaluate as a staff is first off, what do we learn in all three phases, because every week you have to work to play better,” Danielson said. “When you win a game or lose a game, it should not change how you evaluate it … we’ve had a lot of success, we’ve had some bad losses as well. We got to learn from every single game.”

Pocketbooks equal production in this era. Oregon was top 20 in total offense and defense in 2025, and there’s no evidence that anything will change this time around.

Playing well and keeping the score close for a good chunk of the game is something the Broncos can leave Oregon feeling proud of as well. Looking back to 2024, Boise State lost to Oregon by just three points, but still landed a CFP berth as the fourth seed. Even in a loss, Boise State has a lot to gain.

Power 4

Top end college football rosters can be worth over double what the Broncos’ is estimated at. In this era of college football, the gap between David and Goliath has never been so wide and well documented.

Beating Oregon this year would be unexpected, sure, but not unprecedented. Boise State holds itself to this standard, and needs to live up to it eventually.

The Broncos are not feared like they once were back in the golden years of Boise State football. The last time Boise State took down a Power 4 school was back in 2019 in the Week 1 upset at Florida State.

Since then, the Broncos have lost to Washington, Oregon, Penn State and Notre Dame. The common trait between them? They’ve all been legitimate national title contenders, winning at least one playoff game over the last four years.

Boise State on the other hand has regressed since the glory days of Chris Petersen and Kellen Moore. Even during Bryan Harsin’s tenure, the Broncos were nationally respected and even feared.

With each passing year without a big-time win over a Power 4 team, the Broncos’ ‘giant killer’ reputation slowly shifts from recent success to historical events.

PAC-12 Championship

The PAC-12 is far from a ‘Group of 6 super-conference,’ and most of the programs that make up the league aren’t in peak form this year.

Danielson has found a way to lead Boise State to three straight Mountain West Championships, and in all three of those games, UNLV was the opponent.

Since then, the Rebels have stayed behind in the Mountain West, where now Boise State’s biggest competition comes from the likes of Washington State, Fresno State and SDSU.

In 2026, each PAC-12 program will play one another at least once, with a week 12 flex game and then of course the conference championship.

It’s hard to say this iteration of the PAC-12 is ‘the cream of the crop,’ so Boise State should not struggle to win the conference and be the Group of 6 CFP candidate.

Bowl Game

This one stings.

Boise State has notched just one bowl game victory in the last eight years. To put that in perspective, the Broncos won six of them from 2010 to 2017. The lone bowl game ‘W’ was the 2022 Frisco Bowl, where Boise State narrowly beat North Texas 35-32.

Before the Frisco Bowl, the last time the Broncos won a bowl game was the last time they beat Oregon ; a 38-28 victory in the 2017 Las Vegas Bowl under Bryan Harsin.

Since then, Spencer Danielson was promoted to head coach, and hasn’t had much postseason success, outside of a first round exit in the 2024 CFP.

It’s safe to say the Broncos have been in a bit of a drought, and this year is pivotal as far as what the future looks like for the program.

Boise State is a premier team among PAC-12 members, so it’s up to them and a handful of other schools, SDSU and Wazzu included, to carry the torch and put not only their own schools on the map, but the new PAC-12 as well.