Boise State removes interim tag and names Spencer Danielson head coach

Boise State promoted interim head coach Spencer Danielson to the full-time job Sunday after the Broncos won the final two games of the regular season and the Mountain West championship with him in charge.

Danielson took over on an interim basis after Andy Avalos was fired on Nov. 12, just 36 games into his tenure as the head coach in Boise and with the Broncos sitting at 5-5. The team responded with wins over Utah State and Air Force and qualified for the Mountain West championship game.

The Broncos beat UNLV in the championship game Saturday and a day later athletic director Jeremiah Dickey made the decision to give Danielson the full-time position.

“I value process over results. As exciting as it was to win the last three games and reclaim the conference championship, from the standpoint of hiring a head coach, it was more exciting to me to hear Spencer’s vision for the future and how he is going to approach the job full time,” Dickey said.

Danielson will be just the eighth head coach for the Broncos since they moved to the FBS level in 1996. He’s another member of the Boise State family tree moving up into the lead role. Danielson has been with the Broncos since 2017 and was promoted to defensive coordinator before the 2021 season.

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Avalos was the first coach fired by the Broncos since they made the move up to the top level of college football. The others moved on to other jobs.

Houston Nutt took over after Pokey Allen died from cancer, but lasted just one year before taking the job at Arkansas. Dirk Koetter was in Boise for three seasons before moving on to Arizona State. Dan Hawkins stayed five seasons before taking the Colorado job. In his place stepped Chris Petersen, who won 92 games in his eight seasons before leaving for Washington.

And when Avalos was hired, he was replacing Bryan Harsin, who departed for Auburn after seven seasons in charge of the Broncos.

The job at Boise State has lost the cachet it once had when the team was regularly ranked among the top programs in the country during most of Petersen’s tenure. The Broncos were 22-14 under Avalos. Harsin had five 10-win seasons but only once played in a New Year’s Six bowl game during his time, that coming in his first year of 2014.

Now it’ll be on Danielson to restore some of that luster at a time when Boise State hopes to get back on the national stage with the expansion of the College Football Playoff next year.

Danielson played collegiately at Azusa Pacific and started his coaching career there before moving to Boise State in 2017 as a graduate assistant.

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