AllBuffs.com: What is your first memory as a CU fan?
CU At The Game: I have to admit that I was not a member of the Buff Nation until I hit campus for my freshman year in 1980. Raised in Bozeman, Montana, I grew up a fan of the hometown Montana State Bobcats (yes, yes, those Montana State Bobcats. The 2006 game was my own little private version of Hell on Earth).
As a result, my first CU memories were not positive ones. My freshman year, the Buffs and their fans endured the first ten loss season in school history. My first game as a Buff fan? Colorado fell behind UCLA 56-0 ... at halftime. My first home game? A 49-7 loss to Indiana (coached by none other than Lee Corso). That same week, a scathing article in Sports Illustrated came out, blasting the CU athletic department for dumping "minor" sports like baseball, wrestling, and gymnastics. The following week, the Buffs were merely by-standers in the epic 82-42 Oklahoma track meet. The game set 63 different records, the most amazing being the 758 yards rushing posted by the Sooners (I'll pause for a moment while you let that number sink in ... Oklahoma/rushing/one game/758 yards). The following week, the Buffs fell - for the second year in a row - to that noted football powerhouse, Drake.
You get the idea ...
Thus, I became a Buff fan during what was arguably the lowest ebb in Colorado athletic history. There was nowhere to go but up!
AllBuffs: Tell us how you got started blogging, and a little about the history of CU at the Game.
CU At The Game: CU at the Game actually started out as a book, and had its origins about a dozen years before the website was created.
In 1996, I read a book by a pair of football fanatics who spent a fall touring the country, checking out some of the greatest venues in college football (they were in Boulder for the CU/Nebraska game). Saturday Afternoon Madness was inspirational, as I had always wanted to visit the shrines of the game. Leaving my job for four months, though, would not likely sit well with those in our household at the time, consisting of my wife, two kids, two dogs, and a cat. So rather than hit the road, I opted, as they say, to "write about what you know". What I knew about was Colorado football.
CU at the Game wouldn't have come to be, however, if it were not for the assistance of the late great Fred Casotti, whose title in 1996 was "CU historian", and of Dave Plati, then as now the Colorado Media Relations Director. I was given unfettered access to the CU football archives, where the Buffs have a file on every game Colorado has ever played. Dave also gave me old media guides, which were invaluable resources for game stats, locker room quotes, and player biographies. Armed with boxes of information, I set out to write my own history of Colorado football.
Both Casotti and Plati advised me, though, that books about Colorado football did not sell well. So, for the next twelve years, I worked on my book, writing up each current game as it was played, while using the off-season to fill in stories from previous years, all the while doubting that CU at the Game would ever find an audience.
Then, in 2008, my daughter-in-law, Mindy, who was much more computer savvy than I, suggested I try "blogging". I worked with an MSU computer science student that year to set up the website. In the summer of 2009, I turned to a professional web designer, and CU at the Game has now found a home.
AllBuffs: What are the things about CU at the Game that differentiate it from other online Buff sites?
CU At The Game: It has to be the Archives.
Every CU website seeks to keep its readership informed and up-to-date about the Colorado football program, but CU at the Game is unique in that it is also a repository of three decades of Colorado football. Want to see the replay of the final drive of the "5th down" game against Missouri? It's in the Archives . Want to watch "The Catch" just one more time? It's in the Archives. If you have a favorite game, player, or season, you can relive some of those memories in the CU at the Game Archives.
