THE INSIDE TRACK : Morning Briefing : Same Place, Different Time for Boise State

When Boise State’s football team plays UCLA in the season opener Saturday, it won’t be the Broncos’ first trip to the Rose Bowl.

In 1950, when Boise was a two-year community college, it played Long Beach City College in the Junior Rose Bowl and lost, 33-13. The defeat ended a 40-game Boise State winning streak.

The game, played in 98-degree heat, attracted 47,525 to the third game of the JRB series. Boise became a four-year school in 1965.

Larry Jackson, Boise State’s quarterback, later pitched for 14 seasons in the National League with the Cardinals, Cubs and Phillies. In 1964 he won 24 games for Chicago.

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Trivia time: When was the last time a football team ranked No. 1 in the AP preseason poll went on to win the national championship?

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More than semantics: There is a big difference between driving a race car and a historic race car, according to Dr. Peter Talbot, chief steward of the Monterey Historic Automobile Races.

“This is not about how fast you go, but about how well you can go fast,” he said of the Laguna Seca event.

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Fish for breakfast? Move aside, Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan. The newest face on a Wheaties box will be that of a fisherman--David Walker of Cannon, Ky.

Walker earned the honor by winning the Land O’Lakes angler-of-the-year title.

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Bad lawn: The Cleveland Browns spent $283 million on their new stadium, outfitting it with the finest in everything to make it one of the NFL’s nicest, but Chris Spielman says they forgot the grass.

“The field needs work,” the Browns’ middle linebacker said. “I about blew my knee out on it. You go and plant and you dig up divots. That needs to get fixed. It’s a shame to have such a special place like that and a cow pasture for a field.”

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Sounds bad: Did you ever get on a boat, only to be stricken with syngesophobia? According to Boating magazine, that is the fear of having your mother-in-law aboard (actually fear of any relative).

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On the job: Even Dorothy Shanahan is intimidated by her husband Mike’s sideline stare on Denver Bronco game days.

“When the camera catches him, it looks like, if he smiled his face would crack,” she said. “I see him on Sunday afternoon, I think, ‘Who is that guy?’ ”

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You can look it up: Lou Piniella of the Seattle Mariners and Joe Torre of the New York Yankees are the only active major league managers who played in at least 1,000 victories and had at least 1,000 base hits during their playing careers.

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Trivia answer: 1993, Florida State.

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And finally: Former Minnesota Viking coach Bud Grant says don’t believe anyone who says NFL exhibition games are to evaluate players and not for commercial reasons.

“If a coach doesn’t know who his best players are after six weeks of practice, then he’s not doing his job,” Grant says.