Plati-'tudes
October 17, 2000
Ah, this transplanted New Yorker is reveling in sweet joy that it looks like it will be the Yankees versus the Mets in the World Series. My heart "kind of" goes out to local Red Sox fans who must deal with it, especially Ron Zappolo!
TRIVIA QUESTIONS... CU -- CU has started a true freshman at quarterback (Craig Ochs) and running back (Marcus Houston) this season. It's the only second time that's ever happened in the same season at CU, though they've yet to start in the same game. That happened the first time it happened - see if you know the year, opponent and players. Godfather -- True or False: "Father" Guido Sarducci from Saturday Night Live fame appeared in one of the Godfather films.
SPEAKING OF THE SERIES... Though CU hasn't had a baseball team in 20 years (something athletic director Dick Tharp hopes to change in Athletics 2010, as he has stated), the Buffs still have a tie to this year's World Series. The New York Mets' catching coach is John Stearns, an All-American in both football and baseball when he roamed the CU campus between 1970 and 1973. Stearns, known by the nickname, "Bad Dude," was caught on video last week screaming, "The monster's out of the cage," when Met catcher Mike Piazza doubled against the St. Louis Cardinals to break out of a mild slump. Stearns had one of gutsiest plays in CU football history, and did so without Coach Eddie Crowder's permission in the 1971 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl. CU was faced with a 4th-and-9 from its own 10 early in the fourth quarter against Houston, owning a 23-17 lead at the time. The Cougars, ranked No. 15 in the nation, had just cut the lead to six and had momentum and the hometown crowd in its favor, when Stearns, a safety who doubled as the team's punter, took off on the play and gained 12 yards for a first down in calling the fake punt himself. CU was able to hold off Houston down the stretch in winning 29-17 and finishing No. 3 in the nation, behind Nebraska and Oklahoma, to this day the only instance one conference had the top three schools in the final national polls.
"BOLDER BOULDER" BIG 12 STYLE... The 2000 Big 12 Conference Cross Country Championships will be held at the Buffalo Range on CU's South Campus next Saturday, Oct. 28, with the men's portion of the meet set for 10 a.m. and women's at 11 a.m. CU last hosted a conference cross country meet in 1992, when the old Big Eight event was held at Lake Valley Golf Course. Colorado enters the race as the favorite in both competitions, as the men are ranked No. 1 nationally and the women No. 5 in polls released today (Oct. 17). The men just won the Iowa State Pre-Nationals meet in Ames last weekend, totally dominating the field, while the women finished fourth (though Coach Mark Wetmore, trying to be his usual "realistic with a dose of pessimism" self, noted that a few big name runners were missing from the men's meet). Under Wetmore's tutelage, CU has won all four Big 12 men's titles and three of the four women's titles, and are looking to increase those numbers on its home turf.
BIG CONGRATS... It barely made the agate in the Denver papers, but former CU golfer Scott Petersen won the Buy.com Inland Empire Open last weekend in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. The win carried with it a $72,000 check and a full-year exemption on the Buy.com Tour for 2001, along with the bonus of earning a bye for the first round of the PGA Tour qualifying for the next five years (and that's a very significant extra). Scott, a Cherry Creek graduate who played for Mark Simpson at CU in 1992 and 1993 (after transferring back to Colorado from Tulsa, where he spent two years), is trying to get on the PGA Tour, where another ex-Buff did pretty well last weekend. Jonathan Kaye ('90-93) shot a final round 62 to finish third at the Invensys Classic is Las Vegas-earning a $246,500 payday in the process. Kaye is now 36th on the money list, and is closing in on a spot for the Tour Championship, set for Nov. 2-5 outside of Atlanta. The top 30 on the list qualify for the Tour's final regular season stop.
RUMOR: CU doesn't care about its fans, so it won't televise games that ABC or FOX doesn't select.
TRUTH: That anonymous (of course) E-mail I received last week is so far off base I thought I'd address it just to get the truth out there.
ABC and FOX select on the average three games a week in Big 12 play to televise (occasionally it's four if ABC is doing games at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., or some Saturdays only two). If a school wants to televise a game on its own (either over the air locally or pay-per-view), it must receive permission from the Big 12, which in turn seeks it from both ABC and FOX, unless it wants to televise the entire game outside of the Big 12 package windows (which would mean 7:00 a.m. or 8:30 p.m. kickoffs, and that's not going to happen). The conference approved one pay-per-view broadcast this year (Oklahoma-Arkansas State on Sept. 9) and okayed Nebraska's webcast experiment game with San Jose State on Sept. 2. All 12 schools entered the Big 12 television agreements as partners, and it's one of the more lucrative in college football. Each school receives a base payment in the range of $1.6 million, plus receives at least $161,000 per appearance. To protect those kind of figures, which all schools need, ABC, for example, couldn't have CU-Texas televised in the Denver and Texas markets up against Oklahoma-Kansas State last Saturday. In a perfect world, we would love to have all our games televised, especially those on the road, but we are partners in a conference agreement and people need to know that.
INTO BUFFALO ART?... Courtesy of perhaps the biggest Buff fan of all-time, Christy Jordan (All-America punter Zack Jordan's daughter), you might want to check out this web site: www.buffalo.com. Click on the Herd About Buffalo tag line down the left hand side, and it will lead you to an on-line auction featuring some very cool buffalo art. Enjoy!
INTO COOL PICS?... Check out Cliff Grassmick's new website, as he has some cool CU (and other) photos to check out. Cliff, a photographer with the Boulder Camera as well as one our staff photographers, launched his site within the last two weeks. Go to www.cliffpix.com and see what he's got!
NEW COLLEGE FOOTBALL ENCYCLOPEDIA... Richard Billingsley, one of the eight authors of the weekly computer polls in use for the BCS, has put together a CD-ROM about the history of college football, some five years in the making. Ordering information and sample pages area available on the Internet at www.cfrc.com. At first glance, it appears to be quite comprehensive. When will CU's media guide be available in such a format? If I had to guess, probably in the next two years. A couple of schools are experimenting with it now (Alabama, Miami), as are a couple of NFL teams. While it's a nice format to receive as a gift, it's still easier to peruse a book for reference, especially if you're away from a computer. So media guides will never truly disappear, unless trees do.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?... Former CU soccer goalie and assistant strength and conditioning coach Heidi Burgett has surfaced in California, where she is the oversees internal and external communications of the northwest region for the United Parcel Service (UPS). There are approximately 340,000 employees in California, Oregon and Washington that she is responsible for communicating with, and she also handles speech writing, media relations, community involvement and mediations. Heidi, one of the original members of the varsity soccer team at CU (she played in '96 and '97) has maintained contact with several former teammates and other CU athletes through the years, and "filed" this report: "Nina Bjornstad (Soccer '96-97) is living up in Seattle and working for Amazon.com; Brita Zoellner (Soccer '96-97) is currently in law school at Santa Clara University; Molly Poncetta (Soccer '96) is in grad school at Samuel Merrit College in Oakland; Amy Siegel (Soccer '96) is in a graduate extension at Harvard; Donna Holyman (Soccer '97) is the assistant soccer coach at Kansas; Liz Swain (Soccer '96-97) is working in accounting in Colorado and successfully competing in triathlons; Christina Cambra (Soccer '96-97) is "living off the land" in Alaska; Teri Fildey (Soccer '96-98) is working in advertising in San Francisco; Jenny Circle and Alexis Felts (Basketball) are both living and working out here in California as well, Lauri Weathers (Basketball) is working as a youth counselor in Colorado; La Shena Graham is working in accounting in Colorado and De Celle Thomas (Basketball) is a businesswoman in California. I could go on and on and on. Something about the special experience that is "Colorado Athletics" has inspired us to all keep in pretty good touch."
ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST... Another bachelor and bachelorette associated with CU athletics have bitten the dust, as former assistant SID Ollie Kirkpatrick (pictured at left, his '91 picture as a freshman student assistant SID, notice the tight rolled pants) and former CU soccer player Jenny Law will wed next summer. How "CU" is their relationship? Both were student assistants in the SID office back in 1994 (see pic of both from the '94 SID staff picture, just weeks before "The Catch"), and Jenny was also a member of CU's club soccer team. Their first date was the day/night of "The Catch," on Sept. 24, 1994, and they got engaged on the 10th anniversary of the Fifth Down (Oct. 6, 2000). That's right, they dated approximately six years and two weeks before the O-man popped the question, almost matching the courting period for assistant AD John Krueger and associate SID Colleen Reilly (6 years, 10 months, before marrying this past June; what am I running here, a dating service?). The actual proposal by Ollie to Jenny was supposed to take place at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Cherry Creek, but Ollie let the cat out of the bag while driving there; instead, it wound up taking place as he exited off I-25 at mile marker 205 (University Blvd., so at least he had the right exit). The ring was going to be inside the store, and he was trying to set it all up when he said to her, "You're going to come in with me to get the ring, right." Or something close to that... oops! Ah, SID love-two former grad assistants wed a few years back -- Scott McDuffee and Jenny Converse (pictured at left from the same 1994 SID staff picture), who now reside in Atlanta. Congrats to Ollie and Jenny!
THIS WEEK'S NUMBER... 43.0. That was the percentage of 49,278 votes that CU's live buffalo mascot Ralphie IV received in last week's ESPN/Tostitos Tourney of Traditions contest with the University of Georgia's live bulldog mascot, "Uga." Yes, Uga, the slobbering, 4-inch high pug-faced mutt beat our Ralphie by some 6,860 votes (Gee, I'm not bitter). The bulldog, which occasionally takes a snip at opposing players, and once actually threw up on Rick Neuheisel's shoes when he went in there with UCLA, garnered 56.9 percent of the vote, leaving all of us to wonder where the .1 percent went. Thanks to all of you who voted; we did receive word that several fans of our rivals (I won't mention where, but one's within driving distance and the other will be hosting us on Thanksgiving) cast votes against Ralphie. That, along with the fact that some of our fans said their votes weren't accepted combined with the head start Georgia had from announcing it at its home game with Tennessee spelled doom for Ralphie. Oh well; you have to figure Ohio State's "Dotting of the I" or Texas A&M's "12th Man" are the favorites to win at this point.
TRIVIA ANSWERS... CU -- It was Nov. 22, 1986 in a 49-3 win at Kansas State: Marc Walters started at quarterback and O.C. Oliver was one of the two starting tailbacks in the wishbone offense. Godfather -- True... to an extent: Actor Don Novello, who played Sarducci, showed up in III as Michael's PR advisor, Dominic Abbandando.
Oh, and happy birthday to my "kid" brother Mark, who turns 39 this Thursday. He's sequestered somewhere with David Bowie at the present, writing the music for Bowie's next album. But as musical as he is, he faithfully scours Plati-'Tudes from time-to-time (and I'll do anything to secure free Bowie tickets for his next tour).
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"Plati-'Tudes" features notes and stories that may not get much play from the mainstream media; offers CU's take on issues raised by those who have an interest in the program; answers questions and concerns; and provides CU's point of view if we should disagree with what may have been written or broadcast.
Have a question or want to know CU's take on something? E-mail Dave at david.plati@colorado.edu, and the subject may appear in the next Plati-'Tudes.