Western Athletic Conference/Boise State Broncos

Western Athletic Conference/Boise State Broncos

College football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was built first and foremost as a post-season money machine for big-time programs such as Alabama, Florida, Notre Dame and Southern Cal. But, politically, the college athletic directors who formulated the system couldn't very well lock out the scrappy upstarts in non-power conferences such as the Mountain West and WAC.

It was this crack in the BCS' bowl-qualifying criteria for so called non-power conferences that the WAC wanted to exploit in 2009-10 on behalf of its then-undefeated, blue-turf-burning Boise State Broncos. No sooner had the Broncos beaten Oregon of the Pac-12 for their third straight win over a BCS conference power, WAC Commissioner Karl Benson commissioned Peyron Strategic Communications to design an economical campaign to convince major poll voters, whose weekly top 10s were part of the criteria for major bowl selections, that Boise State deserved to be a BCS buster.

Peyron's program focused in major media markets where there was no hometown power conference favorite (Washington, D.C., Cleveland, New Orleans and Houston, for example) and positioned Benson as the advocate for the most deserving outsider for a program-making BCS bid. The Broncos, behind the winningest quarterback in college football history, Kellen Moore, played their way in and celebrated an undefeated season with a 14-10 win over TCU in the Fiesta Bowl. Said Benson: "Peyron's fact-based campaign helped us cash the biggest check in our conference history -- $7.1 million.

Peyron strategies helped the WAC and Boise State a return on investment of more than $7 million.