This Idaho Team, Not Boise State, Was Featured in the New York Times

In just about everything, someone wins, and someone loses. However, one team in Idaho lost a high-profile game but continues receiving national media accolades. The loss was so significant that the vaunted New York Times profiled the team in a recent article. 

Most anyone who has any involvement with college football in Idaho thinks the state has only one team worth national attention: the Boise State Broncos. However, it was the team up North, way North, that garnered glowing admiration not for a win but for a very close loss during the first week of the college football season.

The Idaho Vandals continue to enjoy a welcomed resurgence under their charismatic head football coach, Jason Eck. Idaho fans were distraught before Coach Eck arrived in Moscow. The university made the embarrassing decision to leave the football bowl subdivision, the highest college football division, due to the team losing games and losing money.

The Vandals returned to the Big Sky Conference in the Football Championship Division, which has a multiteam post-season playoff. The big-money schools are in FBS, and the smaller schools are in the FCS.

The Vandals didn't win the game against Oregon, but as the New York Times noted, if the team hadn't lost a significant amount of its power players to Name Image and Likeness deals from larger schools, the Vandals could've pulled off one of the most historic upsets in college football history.

The team lost 24-14, but the game was more competitive than the score indicated. The Ducks are one of the teams favored to win the FBS national title, while the Vandals were picked to lose by forty or fifty points.

How many players did the Vandals lose to outrageous financial offers? Coach Eck shared what happened to the New York Times/ The Athletic.

"Meanwhile, this offseason, the Vandals lost seven of their top players to FBS programs via the transfer portal. Five of them received NIL deals in the low six figures, Idaho coach Jason Eck said."

The good news for the Vandals is they may have lost the battle, but they're looking good to win the war. And remember, it's only week two of college football in America.

Stay tuned, true believer, Boise State visits Oregon on Saturday night. Can the Broncos match the Vandals' in-game performance?