Who Ran the Program at Boise State
The Boise State Broncos football program has had several head coaches since they moved up to FBS. The list isn't long, but it covers some of the most consequential coaching changes in college football history. If you are researching Boise State Coach History for a project, a bet, or just general interest, here is the straightforward breakdown of who was there and when. Ken Hatfield (1987-1991) - Hatfield was the coach when Boise State was still in the Big Sky Conference at the Division I-AA level. He took them to three playoff appearances and won a national championship game in 1988 against Maine. That run is what put Boise State on the map as a program that could compete with anyone regardless of subdivision. Bob Ash (1992-1994) - Ash inherited a program that had just proven it belonged at the highest level and guided them through their transition period into Division I-A. He went 20-17 over three seasons. Not flashy, but he kept things stable while the program adjusted to big-school schedules and bigger expectations.
Dan Hawkins (1995-2000) - Hawkins brought a spread offense and some national attention. His 1999 season stands out - he took Boise State to the Las Vegas Bowl and gave Utah a tough game. He finished 39-27 overall. The key takeaway from his tenure is that he proved a program in the WAC could beat power-conference teams and make people take notice. He left for Colorado after the 2000 season, which showed exactly where a successful Boise State head coach could land next. Leon Silver (interim, 2001) - Silver coached one game after Hawkins left and before Chris Petersen was hired. He went 0-1. That is it. He is usually mentioned only because the record books require it. Chris Petersen (2001-2014) - This is the coach everyone remembers. Petersen built the program into a national powerhouse. He went 151-32 over 14 seasons. He won two BCS bowl games - the 2007 Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma and the 2010 Chick-fil-A Bowl against Georgia. He took Boise State from a WAC novelty to a Group of Five program that consistently ranked in the top 15. His teams were known for speed, trick plays, and a blue-collar identity that contradicted the flashy reputation people assumed. He left for Washington after the 2014 season, and again that trajectory showed what a hot commodity a successful Boise State head coach had become.
Bryan Harsin (2015-2020) - Harsin came from Auburn as co-cordinator and took over a program that had lost its star coach. He went 49-27 in six seasons. He won the 2015 Arizona Bowl, took them to the 2018 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, and kept Boise State mostly competitive in the Mountain West. The criticism he faced was that the roster turnover after Petersen left made the transition harder than people admitted at the time. He left for Clemson as an associate head coach and passed the torch to Matt Wells. Matt Wells (2021-2023) - Wells had a rough run. He went 14-23 in three seasons. The offense sputtered, the team underachieved relative to expectations, and he was fired after the 2023 season. His tenure is a reminder that not every coach who lands at Boise State is built for this specific program. The culture Petersen built is harder to replicate than people think. Andy Avalos (2024-present) - Avalos came from Colorado where he had his own struggles. He is in his first season as of this writing. The question now is whether Boise State can break the pattern of hiring coaches who struggled elsewhere and finding someone who actually fits the program.
Get the Full Details
I tracked every one of these coaching tenures while compiling recruiting data for a sports analytics project, and I ran into a specific problem with how different databases handle interim coaches. Some sources list Leon Silver with zero games and no record. Others omit him entirely. When I needed exact win-loss records for a betting model, I had to cross-reference the Boise State athletic department press releases directly because no single aggregator had the interim designation correct. The workaround was pulling the 2001 schedule from the university archives and confirming the head coach listed on the official box score. It added about forty-five minutes to the work, but it saved me from building on bad data. Here is something people miss when they look at this history. The Petersen years are often cited as proof that Boise State is a program that elevates its coaches. But the reality is more nuanced. Petersen inherited a program that Hawkins had already built nationally relevant. His success was partly about his own ability, but it was also about recruit retention and the fact that Boise State had become a destination for players who wanted to play in a offense-first system. The coaches after him all struggled to maintain that level because the system Petersen built was deeply tied to his specific personnel decisions and recruiting pipeline. Removing Petersen was not like removing any other coordinator. It was like removing the architect who designed the whole building. Another counter-intuitive point: the Ken Hatfield championship run at I-AA level is more impressive structurally than most people give it credit for. Hatfield won that title game 42-21 against Maine, but the real story is that he did it while Boise State was still establishing itself as a football school. The program had no tradition of winning at that level. Hatfield built the foundation that made everything after it possible. People talk about Petersen restoring Boise State to prominence, but Hatfield created the prominence in the first place.
If you need the raw numbers, the official records are at boisestate.com/sports/fball and the NCAA division records. I found the press release archives more reliable than the third-party stats sites, especially for the early Hawkins years where some bowl game details were listed differently depending on which source you checked.
