Lehi Sports
Local Madsen leads Boise State Broncos into the College Football Playoff
It’s been a crazy year up on the blue turf in Boise, and former American Fork High School quarterback and two-time All-Statefootball first team member Maddux “Mad Dog” Madsen is at the middle of it all.
After playing his final football season in 2021, Madsen transferred to Lehi High School, where his father Eric Madsen was an assistant coach on the baseball team and his brothers McGuire and Mays were on the squad.
He helped lead the Pioneers to the 5A state championship in 2022 and was named the 5A Player of the Year. He had an 8-2 record with 74 strikeouts as a pitcher and batted .455 with 42 RBI.
After competing for and winning the starting quarterback job for the BSU Broncos this fall as a redshirt sophomore, Madsen and his teammates earned a 12-1 record and the Mountain West Conference championship.
Oh, and a first-round bye into the first-ever College Football Playoff 12-team bracket as the No. 3 seed.
It would be hard for casual football fans to understand the monumental nature of this last achievement. Boise State ended up ranked No. 8 in both the AP and AFCA Coaches polls, the highest-ranking team outside of the Big Ten and SEC plus independent Notre Dame.
You read that right. Higher than any team in the ACC or Big 12, and far ahead of any other team outside the Power 4 group. Their only loss this season was by a field goal to undefeated No. 1 Oregon in the second contest of the season.
The Broncos were ranked No. 9 in the final CFP poll but they were awarded one of the coveted slots. The five highest-ranked conference champions by the 13-person committee earned automatic bids to the playoff, with the top four champions getting a first-round bye.
This formula was supposed to allow for a team from outside the Power 4 to get one of those coveted spots, and it did. Boise State has never been in a playoff game before.
The Broncos will take on whichever team survives a win-or-go-home duel on Dec. 21 between No. 11 seed SMU (11-2) and No. 6 Penn State (11-2) in the first round. The quarterfinal will be played in the Fiesta Bowl, scheduled for Dec. 31 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Boise State has won the Fiesta Bowl three times in program history, in 2007, 2010 and 2014. The school also received a bid to join the reformulating PAC-12 and will move to that conference beginning in the fall of 2026.
The 5-foot-10, 201-lb Madsen’s stats have been impressive in his first season as the starter. To date, he has completed 224-of-361 passes (62%) for 2714 yards and 22 touchdowns against just three interceptions. He was also the team’s second-leading rusher with five more touchdowns on the ground.
Madsen received Honorable Mention All-Mountain West honors this season, and was also named a Davey O’Brien Award Great 8winner, a Manning Award Star of the Week and a Mountain West Offensive Player of the Week.
It hasn’t hurt the team’s success that its leading rusher is junior running back Ashton Jeanty (5-9, 215). He won the Maxwell Award as college football’s top player and the Doak Walker Award as the nation’s top running back.
He also finished second in the Heisman Trophy race by a historically narrow margin, the smallest since 2009, and was the only unanimous pick for the AP All-America Team. Jeanty has declared for the 2025 NFL draft, where he’s expected to be a first-round pick.
In an interview on Dec. 13, Madsen said he wasn’t surprised that his team has done so well. “Personally, I kind of knew the team that we had and if we didn’t make it (the CFP), it would almost be a failure,” he said. “A lot of guys on the team were in the same boat.
“Those who were on the fence mostly flipped after the first UNLV win,” he added. The Rebels were considered to be BSU’stoughest conference opponent, and they beat them again in the MWC championship game. “At this point, no one is really surprised at where we’re at,” Madsen said.
The signal-caller had props for Jeanty too. “The leadership value he brings sets this team itself apart,” he said. “He has everyone’s respect. He can say whatever he wants to and people will listen. He’s instilled a lot of confidence in realistically how good of a team we can be.
“Some kids have trouble grasping the confidence he gives off, but we’re getting there,” Madsen continued. “I think you hear all the time that the great ones bring you with them.
“It’s been important for me and for him to bring everyone with us,” he continued. “In games you saw that skill sets were elevated as everyone wanted to be the best they can for their teammates. I think that a certain level of belief and confidence elevates the way a team plays.
“That’s something that goes through this team. People believed. There were games we were down, but we knew we were going to win. It came from understanding that when those trials come,you can’t break apart.
“Our leaders made sure we glued the team together and didn’tgo against each other,” Madsen went on. “The foundation of a team is built through months of practice. Then we go out and have fun and compete in crazy circumstances and that has helped us down the road.”
Although he may not have been surprised to get there, Madsen is pretty stoked to play in the CFP. “For me, the thing that I’m most looking forward to is no one’s ever done it. BSU has never been in a playoff game. It’s going to be fun,” he said.
“Right now, the hard part is we have no idea who we’re playing, so we’re focusing on a lot of self-scouting on what can we improve on. As for Penn State and SMU, we’ll break down both of them since we’ll have to defend them a little differently, but we’re working through it and getting better by what we’re doing,” he said.
Going back to the beginning of the season, Madsen said he benefitted from the quarterback competition with Malachi Nelson. “I look at it as something that was needed, and I’mgrateful for it,” he said. “The competition raised my level of what I was doing and as camp went on, I gained more confidence with the team that I had.”
He said that it was “really good for both of us. Some might think it was weird, but we helped each other in ways that most people wouldn’t.” Nelson has entered the transfer portal, but “he’s still supportive and all that, one of my good buddies for sure,” Madsen said.
The fact that he’s still early in his college career hasn’t been an issue. “I’d say I’m extremely accepted,” the player said. “Being here two years, I’ve built relationships with a lot of guys and I’m super happy they were interested in me and helped me a lot in preparing for what I needed to do.”
Madsen said that the college atmosphere was a big change from what he’d experienced before. “The levels of play itself are extremely different,” he said. “In high school, I played football in just a little city. In Boise, not just the city but the whole Treasure Valley loves to cheer for BSU and the expectations are significantly higher.”
Madsen had a message for his hometown fans in both American Fork and Lehi. “I want to thank those who are still cheering for me. I do feel a lot of support coming from there. I look back at my experiences at both American Fork and Lehi, and they made me into what I am today,” Madsen concluded.
