BOISE, Idaho — There's a lot to love about going to a Boise State Football game in Albertson's Stadium. Game day food is just one of them.
Earlier this season, the stadium hit record attendance of 37,711 fans against the Washington State Cougars. The fan attendance is more people than the population of Garden City, McCall, Ketchum, and Sun Valley combined.
"This is probably the biggest event in town," senior executive chef at BSU, Rolland Cruz, said about game days.
Months prior, the team is planning and coordinating with the supplier to be ready.
The cook work to feed tens of thousands of people on game day, starts days before in the kitchen, Cruz said. This includes food fans, security staff, stadium suites, and athletes.
According to Cruz, there are about 30 chefs in the kitchen who oversee athletics and concessions. Football season is their busiest time of the year.
The week of a home game, the chefs smoke 2000 pounds of Double R Ranch Brisket, and 2000 pounds of Snake River Pork. The meat tops their specialty hotdogs, and other items.
They also make about 4,500 Double R Ranch all-beef hotdogs, 2,000 pretzels, and 500 pounds of wings for a home game.
All together the team spends over 750 working hours a week to get prepped, according to Robbie Dickson, who is VP of Operations for the university.
"We have to deal with oven space. We have to deal with smokers," Cruz said. "We have to prep couple days in advance, obviously, or we just, we wouldn't be able to hit anything that we're doing."
Cruz added it's a lot of planning and work for just six days a season.
"We have a lot of daily tasks that need to get done in order for the one game to go off well," he said. "And so, once we get back to the beginning of another game, start of a new week... (we) have to... start that list all over again."
Cruz added serving the fans, and others a part of game day has been the highlight of his career.
"Our main goal is, to make sure that the food is safe, and everybody is here to eat safely, but have a good time," Cruz said.