Buff Nation Football

Winning is an art form which is a byproduct of being competitive. While the latter doesn’t guarantee the former, it’s the former that is the ultimate measure of success in college football.  This past Saturday, CU was once again competitive against a ranked opponent but failed to win, losing by three in the last seconds (34-31).  The loss was the third in a row where one could argue CU should have won rather than deserved to lose. 

In 1952, the Academy Award-winning movie High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, made its debut. A story about the difficulty of standing one’s ground, especially when all have abandoned you, has been claimed to be the favorite movie of multiple US Presidents, including Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton (who reportedly showed the movie 17 times during his tenure in the white house). In a movie that plays out in real-time (think Jack Bauer -24), the clock is literally ticking while a noon train filled with a gang of gunslingers brings trouble. In a life-and-death circumstance, the cast of characters vet through their options and ultimately make their final answer.

With two-thirds of this inaugural Coach Prime football season in the bag, our Colorado Buffaloes sport a 4-4 record. Three more wins than all of last season and two games shy of bowl eligibility with four games still to be played, the 2023 Buffaloes have exceeded the expectations of the college football pundits and most of Buff Nation. Yet, losing three of the last four, including the inexcusable loss to Stanford, along with the perception that CU is getting worse rather than better, Buff Nation is on edge.

In his best Bud Fox (Wall Street) impersonation, CU Athletic Director Rick George indeed bagged the elephant with the hiring of Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders as our next Colorado Football head coach. In a literal split second, the CU Football program, which was the laughingstock of the NCAA and left for dead, went from an afterthought as a desired destination to top of mind for nearly every football recruit.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
-Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken

Like the traveler in Robert Frost’s poem, CU stands at a crossroads.  Soon after this email hits your inbox, the University of Colorado will be announcing the hiring of its next football head coach.  It is an understatement to say CU has struggled over the past two decades (rounding up), and that this past season has been the worst in the program’s 133-year storied history.

In a Colorado High School football game, if a team is winning by 40 or more points at any point in the game, the “mercy rule” goes into effect, and the “continuous game clock” begins to run, and it doesn’t stop until there is no time left.  This expedites the end of the game for the safety and mental health of all involved.  In college football there isn’t a mercy rule for a game or for a season.  There are nine days left for Buff Nation to endure what has been the hardest season in decades. Nine days.  This season was over the day CU came out without a clue against TCU seventy-eight days ago.

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