For a couple hundred dollars you, too, can have the wedding of your dreams at a place where discriminating Idaho couples have increasingly come to tie a colorful knot:

The tidy bowl-blue turf of Bronco Stadium, Boise State's football field.

Weddings, family portrait shootings, commercial gatherings, you name it, the smurf turf at Boise State has transcended being merely a playing surface as hardcore Bronco faithful and the just plain curious bask in what has affectionately become known as "The Blue."

While teams like the University of Hawai'i, which plays its Western Athletic Conference opener there Saturday, might swear at having to play the blue-clad home team on college football's only blue playing field, the folks in Boise swear by their synthetic conversation piece.

As much as opponents and pundits might make light of "The Blue," 25th-ranked Boise State has been laughing all the way to the trophy case and bank to this 20th anniversary season.

Indeed, when it came time for the school to replace the old carpet a couple of seasons back, so much a part of the culture had it become that respondents to a newspaper survey voted overwhelmingly to retain "The Blue."

Not that athletic director Gene Bleymaier, whose imagination introduced "The Blue," would have allowed a return to the pre-Sept. 13, 1986 traditional green. For one thing, it has given this school of limited renown, tucked away in the Mountain time zone, a national niche identity in the crowded Division I landscape.

For another, the Broncos are 49-2 there since 1999 and 20-0 all-time in WAC play, major reasons they have won or shared the past four WAC titles.

Until Bleymaier decided he needed to get the most bang for the school's bucks by building in a marketing opportunity, then twisting AstroTurf's arm to comply, the plot of land "Blue" is built upon was best known as a place where aviator Charles Lindbergh once landed with the "Spirit of St. Louis."

Now it is the Broncos who have taken off with their trademark. Thanks to football's success and frequent appearances on ESPN, their field has become enough of a sightseeing draw that officials have an open-gate policy for the camera-toting tourists.

Visitors who have helped make Boise State's logo items a strong sell. The Collegiate Licensing Corporation lists BSU 49th among the 180 schools it represents, topping Boston College and Northwestern among brand-name schools. Royalties are up 500 percent in six years, according to BSU, reaching $325,000 last year.

Meanwhile, the Boise community has rallied around a "Beyond the Blue" academic campaign. Even the largest charity campaign in the area, "Cover the Blue" has the citizenry carpeting the field's surface with food items in less than two days' time to be turned over to the Salvation Army and other groups.

So much has BSU's success been tied to "The Blue" that it has spawned a series of urban myths. Officials swear that water fowl do not plunge to death mistaking the field for the nearby Boise River. Nor, they maintain, has the NCAA, supposedly driven by the protests of vanquished foes, ever threatened to legislate away "The Blue."

But with a conspiratorial wink you'll find them not minding much if the idea spreads among visiting quarterbacks that BSU defenders blend into "The Blue" until emerging to pick off passes.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.