Reusse: Before becoming leader of Bills, QB Josh Allen proved others wrong and his Wyoming coach right

War Memorial Stadium is the football home for the Wyoming Cowboys. There is an altitude sign that proudly reveals the game you are about to watch will be played at “7220 Feet.” That is the highest elevation in college football, and the weather has a fine chance to take a twist or two over the three-plus hours required to complete a televised college contest.

I was there a half-dozen times for an annual event called “Wyomania,” organized by the great, cowboy hat-wearing baseball writer Tracy Ringolsby, and that’s all you’re entitled to know about the weekend event that took place post-World Series, meaning November.

It was to this setting that a young man arrived from a cotton farm outside Fresno, Calif., to start proving to Fresno State and 99% of the FBS talent evaluators that they were horribly wrong about him, about Josh Allen as a quarterback.

“We would be going into our second season in 2015 and it was going to be a hard climb,” said Craig Bohl, then-Wyoming coach and previously leader of national champions at North Dakota State. “We were looking for a quarterback. We had left Carson Wentz as the quarterback at North Dakota State. We also had a commitment from Easton Stick, an outstanding recruit from Omaha, and we promised not to try to change that.

“The way it’s done now, a coach probably would’ve tried to get Easton to flip, but we weren’t going to do that.”

Allen was playing at Reedley, a junior college near Fresno. Dave Brown had worked at Fresno State, was now on Bohl’s staff and lobbied Bohl’s offensive guy, Brent Vigen, to take a look.

“Brent watched Josh, watched his tape and said, ‘I think he could be the guy,’ ” Bohl said. “We were the second Division I school to offer him. Eastern Michigan was the first. And when he took a visit to Laramie, Eastern withdrew its offer.”

The Cowboys’ personnel situation was such that they lost the opener at home to North Dakota — not State, just North Dakota. In a weird twist, Eastern Michigan was the opponent for the second game. Allen started and broke his collarbone early, in another loss.

Allen came back from the broken collarbone in 2016 and things changed. “He was 6-foot-3½ and 210 when he got to Wyoming, and on his way to 6-5 and 240 when he left,” Bohl said. “And he had that arm … always had that.”

Wyoming went 6-2 in the conference, won its division and lost 27-24 to San Diego State in the conference title game.

“The NFL teams were around,” Bohl said. “He would’ve been taken in the first round, I believe, if he had gone pro after that first year as a starter for us. The NFL loved his size, strength, his arm, his competitiveness.

“We played BYU in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego. We lost 27-24, and he was trying to decide … whether to enter the draft or come back with us.

“You know what I think swayed him? His parents, the whole family, are tremendously competitive, get-the-job-done people. And his mother, LaVonne, said to him when it was getting down to decision time: ‘Josh, do you really want the last pass you throw in college to be an interception to BYU to end a three-point bowl loss?’ ”

The answer was no. He went back to Wyoming for 2017. He had a shoulder sprain and missed a couple of games late in the season.

“You know what kind of guy he is, what kind of teammate he is?” Bohl said. “He would be in the 2017 draft and was going in the top 10. He also had that injury.

“And what he did was play quarterback for us in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in Boise. We won big. He wanted to play one last time with the players he’d been with for three years.”

Bohl paused and said: “More than his teammates, more than his coaches — you know who was impressed with that? NFL people. All these players skipping bowl games because they are going to get drafted, they are listening to agents, not coaches."

Buffalo decisionmakers were on Allen for two years. It does seem a perfect match — playing in Wyoming at 7,200 feet in late fall, playing in Buffalo in 20 degrees and blowing snow for two months.

Did the Bills and the NFL see Allen play in nasty weather?

“The game everyone remembers is late October in ‘17,” Bohl said. “We’re playing Colorado State, our archrival. It’s a late afternoon kickoff, it starts snowing and it doesn’t stop. Every break, workers are running out and shoveling off the 10-yard marker lines.

“Colorado State’s good, and we’re behind 13-9 with seven minutes left and have to go 70 yards to win it. Basically, Josh did it all on that drive, getting us in the end zone by making play after play to win it.”

Bohl resigned from Wyoming after the 2023 season. He became the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. The office is in Waco, Texas, thanks to former Baylor coach Grant Teaff getting it built there when he headed the AFCA.

The Bohls have a home outside Laramie, and in the summer they spend as much time at the cabin on our Leech Lake as possible.

Meanwhile, he watches the current chaos in college football and does his best to get the AFCA to reach a consensus on potential solutions and imagines a world filled with an attitude he saw from his Wyoming quarterback.

“Josh Allen is the most other-centered person you’ll find,” Bohl said. “He always wants to give credit, not take it.”