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Chris Petersen can’t get through an interview without hearing it. Can’t sit through a booster club meeting or a social function or, really, the three minutes it takes to fill the car with gas.

Everyone wants to know who will replace Kellen Moore.

Meanwhile, back where it really matters inside the four walls of Petersen’s office that overlooks the blue monster he has created, it’s all about long snappers.

“Quarterback?” Petersen says. “We don’t know who our long snapper is yet.”

That’s right, the long snapper.

Boise State is starting over this fall, and before we get too far into the little program that keeps staying on top, Petersen wants everyone to know it’s replacing more than just graduated All-Everything quarterback Kellen Moore.

Not because Petersen is minimizing Moore’s impact on the program, but because Moore epitomized it: hard-working, overlooked players working to get better every day. And winning like no one has in college football since Petersen took over in 2006.

The numbers are unimaginable: 79 games, 73 wins—and the last four losses by a combined eight points.

“You look at that stretch,” said Boise State guard Joe Kellogg, “and it’s kind of hard to believe.”

And there’s one staggering number remaining: 15. The number of starters Boise State lost from last year’s team; a group that was the core of the unprecedented success. So just when it looks like we’ve seen a flaw in the successful program Petersen inherited and then made wildly better, we hear yet another refreshing piece of reality.

“We had all those guys last year,” Petersen said. “And didn’t win our conference championship.”

Suddenly, this long snapper concept is beginning to make more sense.

It didn’t just magically happen at Boise State; the Broncos didn’t stumble into a once-in-a-lifetime quarterback (Moore) and ride him to relevancy. Staffs before Petersen’s (including his good friends Dirk Koetter and Dan Hawkins) built the program on finding players the BCS heavyweights didn’t want—and eventually developed them into players who fit an ideal and had a purpose.

They play, as every player and coach says every year, with a nasty attitude based on what they know to be undeniably true: everyone just knows little Boise State couldn’t do it on a week-by-week basis against the true big boys of the sport.

Boise State coach Chris Peterson has faced plenty of questions about the large number of players he lost to graduation. (AP Photo)
Those same critics who somehow found excuses for all of those victories against all of those elite teams (Oregon twice, Virginia Tech, Georgia, Oklahoma) are absolutely giddy this fall. Boise State is as vulnerable as it has ever been; gutted by graduation and finishing out the string in one conference (Mountain West) while waiting for more irrelevancy in another (the Big East) in 2013.

The same Boise State team that somehow found a way to beat those BCS schools; that somehow found a way to have more NFL draft picks the last two years than two (Florida and Auburn) of the last four national champions combined, no longer is a factor in the national championship hunt. It ends in Week 1 for this team, with a trip to Big Ten heavyweight Michigan State.

You know, a game where the opponent recruits better than Boise State, has better players than Boise State, and plays in a better conference week after week than Boise State. And this time, Boise State has a new quarterback (Joe Southwick), eight new starters on defense, seven new starters on offense and for the love of all that is pigskin, questions at long snapper.

“I like the position we’re in,” says Boise State cornerback Jamar Taylor.

It’s essentially the same position Boise State has been pushed in year after year. Only this time around, it’s much easier to make the argument stick.

It’s much easier to point at the Boise State roster and see a lack of seniors. Much easier to point to the depth chart and see guys who played as backups the last two years forced into critical roles of lining up and trading punches with the big, bad Big Ten.

Much easier to say that steamy night in East Lansing in two weeks will be the end of Boise State’s hopes as a legitimate threat for a BCS bowl, instead of having to wait until we’re deep into November like the last two seasons.

It’s much easier to say who is D.J. Harper, or Geraldo Boldewijn or Demarcus Lawrence or J.C. Percy? They weren’t highly recruited; they weren’t the foundation of a team that won all those games over the last four seasons when Moore was setting multiple NCAA records.

“There are a lot of guys on this team that realize now is the time to make their mark here,” Kellogg said. “This is their chance.”

That’s Joe Kellogg, another in a long line of players who have fit into what has made this program so successful. A two-star offensive lineman from Arizona that did everything right in high school—and couldn’t get an offer from Arizona or Arizona State.

Shea McClellin was a two-star linebacker from Marsing, Idaho, that no other FBS school wanted, and last April was selected in the first round of the NFL Draft. Kellen Moore had one other FBS scholarship offer after setting high school records in the state of Washington. And it wasn’t from Washington or Washington State.

And on and on and on.

Go ahead and think Boise State is taking a step back this fall. Chris Petersen has bigger things to deal with.

He’s busy with a long snapper competition.