In the spirit of aloha, the Boise State football team will limit this weekend’s focus only to Saturday’s game against Hawaii at Aloha Stadium.
The Broncos will arrive in Honolulu on Friday — a day later than the usual travel schedule for a matchup against the Rainbow Warriors.
“We thought it would be better for us right now,” BSU coach Bryan Harsin said of the travel plans. “There’s nothing we’re able to do once we get to Hawaii. We’re not going anywhere as a team. We’re just going to go to the hotel and kind of just lock ourselves in there, eat, walk through, get up in the morning, go play.”
The Broncos are adhering to the Mountain West Conference’s protocol of being tested three times a week for COVID-19. With tests to be administered today and Thursday, with results known before their Friday departure from Boise, the Broncos will meet the pre-testing requirement that will enable them to avoid being quarantined in Honolulu. But Harsin said the Broncos want to go further in addressing health and safety measures, even creating their own tiny bubbles.
“We’re trying to be respectful to everybody in Hawaii when we roll in there,” Harsin said. “We’re going to do what we’re asked to do. We’re going to stay in the hotel. We’re going to make sure that we keep kind of our own little bubble right there — all the guys coming from Boise, Idaho — and that we don’t do anything other than go play the game and leave and hopefully not have any issues. We certainly don’t want to be part of that. We’re trying to help everybody.”
Because of protocols related to COVID-19, the Broncos did not have 14 players available for the past Thursday’s 51-17 rout of Colorado State. Nine players were out because of positive tests and five because of contact tracing. Harsin is hopeful there will be players added to this week’s active roster.
“We’re going to get some guys back,” Harsin said. “Hopefully, we’ll get a lot more guys back. We’ll see.”
The Mountain West allows teams up to 74 players on the active roster for each game.
The Broncos will have a Hawaii experience different from the one they envisioned before the pandemic.
“Normally, when we go to Hawaii, we’ll take our team, and we’ll do something,” Harsin said. “We might go to Pearl Harbor. We might do something with our team while we’re on the island because it’s a great opportunity for us to do something team-related. There are a lot of guys who have never been there. You’ve got to imagine, they’ve never been to Hawaii. Everybody’s heard about it, everybody knows about it. They’ve never, ever been there. ‘Hey, go walk along the beach.’ ‘Go look at the ocean.’ ‘Go walk around.’ ‘Go be a human being for a while.’ And right now, it’s just not the circumstance that we’re in. We’re going to be respectful of that. We’re going to get there, and stay in our hotel, and go play a game.”
