If the buffalo is rumbling and the cheese is tumbling, it must be a Colorado football Saturday.
If a falcon is slicing the sky and the cadets are kissing the turf, if marshmallows are piling up at the 20 and fresh paint is drying on a 350-foot tall white “A,” it’s got to be Game Day. Either that, or the entire state needs 10 minutes with Dr. Phil.
From Colorado Springs to Boulder and north to Fort Collins – three college towns geographically stacked along a craggy line of foothills – autumn weekends are awash in daffy rituals and tall traditions, many of which involve floating, flapping or flinging.
Stadium antics in the Centennial State may not run thick with football lore, like Notre Dame’s Touchdown Jesus or Ohio State’s dotted “i.” But there’s enough fanatical color to brighten any aspen-yellow Saturday, whether it’s blue-bedecked Air Force cadets marching ruler-perfect into Falcon Stadium or a 1,300-pound buffalo named Ralphie thundering into Folsom Field with the black-clad home team swarming in her wake.
“When we first come out, and we’re behind Ralphie, when you look up in the stands and it’s packed and everybody’s going nuts, it just sends chills down your spine. Still does. I’ve been here five years and every game is like that,” says Colorado senior free safety Tom Hubbard. “A fall afternoon, sun is setting on the Flatirons, it can’t be better than that.”
And while tree-skimming jet fighters and fight-song sing-a-longs stoke players and fans alike, athletic directors look at these game-day environments and simply see green. It’s big fun, sure, but it’s all about putting fannies in the seats. Football ticket revenues supply 20 to 30 percent of each school’s athletic budget. Winning streaks, rivalries and top-ranked opponents may lure extra fans, but that wacky Saturday ambiance is the real selling point, administrators say.
“The overall game-day experience is our No. 1 priority,” CU athletic director Mike Bohn says. “If you ever attend a staff meeting here, we talk the majority of time about that – how to enhance it, how to improve it.”
Colorado’s three Division I teams all block and tackle against a similar mountainous backdrop that dwarfs the action. After that, though, game day at each school gets soaked in its own strange brew.
Patriotism, front, center
At Falcon Stadium, cadets blitz the end zone to crank out post-touchdown push-ups – one per point, sometimes as many as 190 in an afternoon. And as their biceps recover, they pepper the bleachers and the field in a blizzard of “spirit cheese,” their nickname for individually wrapped slices of processed American.
“We try to get them not to do it,” Brad DeAustin, the academy’s vice athletic director, says with a quiet laugh. “It got put into the box lunches the last few times (slices were slung). That was an oversight.”
But the big cheese of Air Force football rituals is the flyby, when fighter jets scrape the stadium rim, then offer a roaring glimpse of their orange-hot engines. The sky above the game bursts with military symbolism. A cadet parachutist floats to the field carrying a game ball or an American flag. A trained falcon circles the crowd, then dives toward a meat-laden lure while cadets shout, “Go, fly away, be free!”
Even generals get misty-eyed.
“It’s the mystique down there, the flybys, the march on, the parachute drops,” says retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Joe Albi, who drives south from Littleton to see the home games. “Patriotism just exudes.”
Ralphie’s the woman
For years, what exuded from many CU fans was far more bubbly and laced with hops. Swilling beer was the top pregame ritual for younger Buffs backers, earning the school a national reputation. But this summer, CU was dropped from the Princeton Review’s list of top party schools – the first time in eight years it didn’t make the cut. While the students’ boozing – and the subsequent ralphing – may be lagging, Ralphie still is chugging.
CU is on its fourth Ralphie mascot, a tradition that reaches back to 1966. This one, originally named “Rowdy,” was nearly killed by a coyote when she was young. Media mogul Ted Turner donated her to the school in 1998. Before each kickoff, Ralphie – guided by cowboy-hatted handlers – leads the team and coaches onto Folsom Field in a full, 25-mph sprint.
“There’s nothing like running out behind Ralphie. There’s just nothing like it,” CU coach Gary Barnett says. “I still run faster (then) than I do any other time of the year. When I finish that run, I always look around, just thankful for where I am and what I get to do.”
Speaking of rowdy, the students haven’t entirely lost their edge. For years, the CU kids were known to throw beer cups and pass female students through the crowd, above their heads. Their latest ritual is flinging marshmallows at each other and onto the field. The school recently banned that mushy tradition.
Meanwhile, a more stately celebration is taking root, the “Buffalo Highway.” Hours before kickoff, fans plunk about 500 CU fans along a nearly 5-mile stretch of U.S. 36, the main route from Denver to Boulder.
“I think the setting in Boulder is among the very best in the country, in front of the Flatirons, and only Colorado has a sky that’s as blue as ours,” says longtime Buffs fan Jerry Johnson, who said he has caught a game at 70 of the 119 Division I football venues. “I may be partial, but driving down into Boulder and looking down at that setting is just idyllic.”
View, tailgating rules
One hour north, Colorado State fans seem to pause a little longer and think a little harder when they’re asked to name the best parts of their game day.
Some mention the tailgating – a football-flying, speaker-thumping, beer-sipping, brat-munching party on the grassy parking lots that surround Hughes Stadium, about 2 miles west of the campus.
“A lot of guys come up and say to me, ‘They don’t even have a paved parking lot!’ But that grass lot does a lot for me. It’s kind of like a back-home feeling,” says CSU wide receiver Dustin Osborn, who drove to some Rams games while growing up in La Junta. “In high school, when we came to the parking lot, everybody had footballs tossing, cooking hot dogs, speakers going, everyone screaming. Then you see the bus arrive and the players get out. A feeling comes over you. You get goose bumps.”
Some CSU fans talk about the cannon fire that punctuates the national anthem. Others cite the 350-foot tall “A” that adorns a rocky hillside west of Hughes Stadium, and which gets a fresh coat of white paint each fall. It’s an homage to CSU’s former Aggies nickname.
Then CSU fans get quiet on the topic.
“There probably aren’t a lot of (other) unique things that I can think of,” Denver- based Rams fan David Weber says during a recent lunch gathering of CSU faithful at an area hotel. “Maybe somebody else here can come up with additional ideas.”
Brett Anderson a 1987 CSU grad, takes a stab: “It’s just the overall atmosphere. Even though it’s a smaller stadium, it’s kind of fun. You can see the game from pretty much any seat in the stadium, so you’ve got a good view.”
Rounding up fans a chore
At CSU – and at the other two schools – those seats still are available, much to the displeasure of the athletic directors.
Last season, average attendance at Hughes Stadium (which holds 34,400) fell by more than 3,000 per game. At Folsom Field, which has a capacity of 53,750, the Buffs hosted only one sellout – against CSU – and 10,000 seats sat empty when Kansas State came to Boulder. At 52,480-seat Falcon Stadium, the largest crowd of the year – 50,075 – came to see Cal, but the average game attendance was about 38,000.
Air Force and CSU lost more than they won last season. And Colorado’s football program was reeling from a recruiting scandal.
Those woes seem to fall into what CSU athletic director Mark Driscoll calls his “three Ws” of attendance.
“Whims, wins and weather,” Driscoll says. “If we get a snowstorm, now that’s going to hurt us. And God forbid we struggle (to get wins) … The largest line item in the revenue side of our budget is ticket sales.”
At CSU, about 19 percent of the overall athletic budget is dependant on football attendance. At Air Force, it’s about 22 percent and at CU it’s about 28 percent, according to their athletic departments.
When football seats sit vacant, potential money oozes out of the athletic budget and sports programs all over the school suffer. When the stadiums are packed, everybody wins – more money for equipment, training, travel and other perks.
“A great year helps us maybe do some extra things we otherwise wouldn’t be able to do,” says DeAustin at Air Force. “Like most places, the football program here is important not only for money, but for cadet morale, the feeling around the institution. It sets the stage for a lot of things, including some of our other sports.”
That’s why all three schools are investing in ways to improve their football bashes – and their game-day atmospheres.
CSU has spent $15.2 million on a Hughes Stadium renovation, including the addition of 4,000 seats beyond the north end zone a year ago. Before games, they erect the Ram Zone tent and lure fans inside with four big-screen TVs, brats, burgers, beer and scouting reports delivered by assistant coaches. Around Fort Collins, the workers at bars, restaurants and hotels have been given CSU T-shirts to wear on game day and CSU flags to fly before kickoff.
In Boulder, the CU band and spirit squad this fall will roam the Pearl Street Mall and duck in and out of restaurants on Friday nights to boost the buzz about game day.
“We’re trying to build the pageantry way before the game,” says Bohn, the Buffs’ athletic director.
And at Air Force – a military base where limited entry points and fan searches have created human bottlenecks – academy officials are trying to loosen up just a little. This season, they will offer express gates where fans who aren’t carrying baby bags or sacks of soda and sandwiches can breeze into Falcon Stadium.
“The flyovers, the cadets, the falcon, all that is part of our special game day,” DeAustin says. “But we don’t ever take it for granted. We can always look for ways to come up with something new.”
Staff writer Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com.
