Filed under: Gonzaga, WAC, Coaches, Recruiting, Boise State
BOISE, Idaho -- Boise State first-year head coach Leon Rice shrugs when asked about his team's chief competition: the Boise State football team. He's answered this one plenty of times.
It's a valid question for Rice, especially considering he left Gonzaga as the associate head coach after 11 years for a program trying to find its footing in the shifting landscape of college athletics.
"(Gonzaga) had so much support in Spokane from the community to the administration to the board of trustees -- all to build that program and give us the things that we needed to build it on a national level," Rice said. "I know that's how it works, and that's one of the things that attracted me to Boise State. That blueprint has been laid with football."
Rice is clear about one thing: he doesn't mind playing second fiddle as long as it's part of the same victorious symphony.
"I look at what Boise State has done in football as a positive for us," Rice said. "You get to show recruits the enthusiasm and the excitement around this football program. When (ESPN's) GameDay was here, we brought recruits in for that game with Oregon State and they were blown away by it.
"They understand that people want to get behind our basketball program that way too if we can keep growing it. I feel like that's an advantage, and we're using it as an advantage when we recruit."
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