BOISE — In these days of college football, with pollsters holding teams’ hopes in their hands and a Bowl Championship Series that may take a lower-ranked team because of potential television ratings, very few certainties exist.

But tonight the No. 6 Boise State Broncos have a sure bet. If they beat Nevada (8-3, 7-0 Western Athletic Conference) they will earn their seventh WAC title in eight years.

BSU (11-0, 6-0 WAC) has won nine straight against the Wolf Pack, but the last two games have been absolute nailbiters. Nevada rallied last season, but still fell 41-34 on a last-second pass breakup in the end zone. Two years ago these two teams set conference records in a 69-67, four-overtime BSU win, that ended when Tim Brady sacked Colin Kaepernick on a 2-point conversion attempt. That thriller was the first start for Kaepernick, who now orchestrates the most productive running game in the NCAA.

Nevada runs the read option out of the pistol formation, a short shotgun set. On the play, Kaepernick has the choice of handing off to either Vai Taua (1,185 yards) or Luke Lippincott (1,028 yards), or taking the ball to the outside himself (1,129 yards). The 1,000-yard trio is the first in NCAA history. Half of the WAC’s 1,000-yard rushers play for Nevada.

“You don’t stop these guys, just hopefully slow them down a little bit,” BSU coach Chris Petersen said of today’s 8 p.m. kickoff on ESPN2. “Once they hit their stride, nobody has been able to slow them down.”

Stride is a great word for Kaepernick, a WAC player-of-the-year candidate. His 6-foot-6 frame carries him on a hyperbolic curve around the defensive edge. BSU must take good angles to account for his speed tonight, but first they must crush the inside run against a forward-plunging offensive line.

“They’re really physical,” BSU tackle Billy Winn said. “They make holes. They’re great athletes and they can move. For a defense, that causes a lot of struggles. It’s hard to have run-throughs when you have an O-line that knows exactly what they’re doing.”

The intangible this week is Kaepernick’s arm. The junior completes 60 percent of his passes and has greatly improved his touchdown-to-interception ratio from last season, throwing for 16 scores and five picks.

“He’s not turning the ball over this year,” BSU QB Kellen Moore said. “That’s key at the quarterback position. Maybe they don’t throw it 30 times, but when they do throw, he’s making good decisions and completing a lot of passes.”

Moore is no slouch himself. He still ranks as the most efficient quarterback in the NCAA (168.5). He threw as many interceptions in the third quarter of the Nevada game last season as he has through the entire 2009 campaign with three.

Moore attacks a Nevada defense that focuses on stopping the run and hence leaves itself suspect against the pass (286.27 ypg). Moore and his receivers should be able to get loose, but the run game may not work against Nevada’s best-in-the-WAC rush defense.

Doug Martin said he expects some short yardage runs early in the game, but said he hopes to break out in the second half as the passing game opens the Nevada box.

These two offenses should put up some big numbers, and it’s almost a guaranteed shootout. The winner gets the league title. Nevada could score some national respect. The BSU pyramid of goals would topple with a loss. Atop that geometric chart is ‘Win a Bowl Game,’ but just below that is ‘Win the WAC.’

“That’s the goal every year,” safety George Iloka said. “Anything short of a WAC championship and we’ll be unhappy here. Some teams will be happy going .500. We’re not about that. Our goal on our pyramid is to win the WAC and we want to win that Friday.”