Boise's Moore a big-time star living in a small-time world
By Dennis Dodd | CBSSports.com Senior Writer Follow DennisBOISE, Idaho -- Kellen Moore knows the humble. On this day, he is sitting in the SID's office sweaty from a workout wearing a Cubs T-shirt. Yes, he's a fan. It is a point of pride that during an offseason trip to Wrigley Field he sat "10 rows up and 10 rows across" from the seat formerly occupied by Steve Bartman.
Bartman? Cubs? Moore also apparently knows curses. Being left-handed has made him famous as Boise State's ultra-efficient quarterback. It has also bugged the heck out of him in the classroom. Moore is the one using a yellow legal pad to take notes instead of a righty-friendly ringed notebook. In addition ...
"Wideouts hate you," he added, "because the ball spins the other way."
The receivers, Boise State and the country have gotten used to the 6-foot-nothing quarterback. Prosser, Wash., makes you that way. Moore's hometown is 6,000 people and a handful of stop lights. If you wanted to play you walked down the street and suggested a game to a friend. And Kellen Moore played them all. Elite was something behind a velvet rope and he was not that.
"Pretty much your family is in farming or education," Moore said of Prosser, now more than a spot on the map in eastern Washington. "One eye doctor, everyone kind of knows each other. It was very cool because you grow up with the exact same people your whole life."
He's right there with you when Moore hears that an undersized lefty quarterback from small town, wine-country Washington is a Heisman candidate.
"I think it's awesome," Moore said, "for Boise State."
Maybe it's the Prosser in him. The Bartman. His Cubness. Yes, Kellen Moore has been conditioned that his height will not to rise one inch because of something ego-centric like an inflated head. As his program grows in stature, coach Chris Petersen will not let his players think they are something they are not. Tweeting has been outlawed. There is no Heisman campaign for Moore. Communication with the outside world has been banned.
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OK, that last one is a joke but not too far off in this place that has been called one of the most isolated cities in the country. Moore is the most recognizable face of a program that is becoming a lightning rod before the 2010 season kicks off. It seems that the world is just waking up to the fact that Boise is ranked in the top five in both the AP (No. 3) and coaches polls (No. 5). The BCS-busting Broncos have the best jumping off point of any non-BCS program in the BCS era. It is the highest a non-AQ team (from a non-automatic qualifying conference) has started since the BCS began in 1998. That Boise could be staring down defending champion Alabama for a national title steams a lot more folks than Moore being CBSSports.com Preseason Player of the Year.
Actually, it might be a push on the indignation meter less than a week before the season kicks off. At least Boise State spent years cultivating its image for the voters. Moore, a junior, showed up on campus thinking, "I'm never going to be able to play. All these guys are 6-5 and tremendously talented." At that point, he would have been happy just to "hang out for five years." Moore admits that if he was recruited today, he probably wouldn't be Boise's starting quarterback. The recruiting has improved that much in his three years on campus.
In a meeting room down from where Moore sits, Bryan Harsin calls B.S. on Moore's self-poor mouthing. This is where the magic happens. Boise's offensive coordinator tells you about Mondays when he is in the room putting in the game plan.
"He's here on his own," Harsin said of Moore, "working on a game plan of his own."
The pair will bounce ideas off each other like Jagger and Richards, cranking out another Stones song. When Moore arrived in 2007, he already had Harsin's playbook downloaded off the Internet. It was five years old but it didn't matter much. That such a website exists is proof that there are more football get-a-lifers like Moore out there.
"He knew stuff we were doing," Harsin said. "He had the concepts. It was just a matter of what we call them."
Boise's former defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox, now at Tennessee, calls Moore "a football nerd." When teammates go out socially, Moore is just as likely to pop in a disc and watch a game. Any game.
"Yeah, I want to be a coach," said Moore, who played for his dad Tom at Prosser High. "It's something I want to do. It's something I have a passion for. Do something you love. If you don't want to sit at a desk and be a business person, don't sit at a desk and be a business person."
That kind of slows speculation of a pro career. If it comes, it comes. Moore will take it but he knows his limitations. Look at him and the first word that comes to mind is not "athlete." At age 6, he had surgery on both Achilles' tendons because they were short and would not allow his heels to touch the ground. Imagine having surgery the last day of kindergarten and not getting the casts off until the first day of first grade.
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| Kellen Moore's Broncos (No. 3) have the highest preseason ranking of any non-BCS team since 1998. (US Presswire) |
To this day, Moore has to fight the habit of running on his tip toes, a result of his old condition. He topped out early at his current dimensions, 6-feet, 187 pounds, in high school. The tallest kid in the class quickly became the scrappy quarterback looking over offensive linemen. Tom Moore would take his sons (Kirby is a sophomore receiver for the Broncos) over to Boise for camps. Something sunk in. Kellen made up for his lack of size by developing a deep knowledge of the game. The other quarterbacks were taller but they weren't necessarily smarter. Harsin remembered Moore's first scrimmage during his redshirt year in 2007.
"He just did some things out there instinctively that you just don't coach," Harsin said. "He started to learn more and more and more. When we got to spring ball you could see it go to another level. He wasn't very accurate in practice, but we got into scrimmages he was on."
If this were a board meeting, a lot of heads would be nodding. Moore gets it. All those years under his father, those camps, even those intimidating first few days at Boise State have formed an efficiency machine. Moore is 27-1 as a starter. The one loss, to TCU, was avenged in January's Fiesta Bowl. As a freshman he set an NCAA record, completing 69.4 percent of his passes. Last season, he was second in pass efficiency behind Tim Tebow. He had the best touchdown-to-interception ratio in the country (39-3). All those pass attempts (431) and Moore took only five sacks.
This is the part when the critics crawl out of the woodwork. They question the competition faced by the CBSSports.com 2009 All-American quarterback. Moore has heard it. You'll hear it again if Boise State beats Virginia Tech in the opener and keeps on winning. Moore was the 31st-rated pro-style quarterback in 2007, according to Rivals.com, part of a recruiting class that was ranked 69th that year. But there are contradictions all over. If the talent is questionable and its competition is weak, why is Boise No. 3 in AP? Why was Moore seventh in Heisman voting last season?
"They're going to recruit the right kind of guy here, whether nobody is recruiting him or everybody is recruiting him," said linebackers coach Bob Gregory, who spent eight years at Cal before returning to the program. "What matters is he's a good fit for Boise."
Knowing the humble helps. Moore's computer screensaver is of Tom Brady at his first NFL combine. He found the picture while researching a paper on communications technology and social change.
"You're trying to correlate why this guy is successful," Moore said.
There's no curse here. No Bartman. No Cubness. Just inspiration. In the picture, a young Brady is shirtless and scrawny, looking more like Kellen Moore than a Super Bowl-winning male ideal.
