BOULDER — When Grant Stucker is 72, rocking in the chair on his front porch in Parker, the youngsters will gather ’round, and one boy will beg: “Grandpappy, tell us the story again, please.”
The old-timer will grin and say: “OK, one more time. Well, way back in ought nine, in my fifth and last year at Colorado State University, I finally got a chance to start my first college football game at quarterback, and it was against Colorado in Boulder, and . . .”
A 22-year-old Grant Stucker stood in a dark corner of Folsom Field on Sunday night and said: “I didn’t want to look back 50 years from now and think that I had given up, that I didn’t stick it out and find out what would happen if I ever got a chance. I didn’t want to have any regrets.”
What happened was Stucker led CSU to an extra- ordinary 23-17 victory over CU in The Showdown By The Flatirons.
The Rams had not won a football game in Boulder since before Stucker was born. Stucker hadn’t started a live game since 2004.
“This is surreal,” Stucker said.
In a story line Horatio Alger would have rejected, Stucker’s first two passes of 2009 went for 11 and 57 yards, and the Rams would score first and hang on at the end. Stucker ended up passing for 208 yards and a touchdown.
This is a young man who had thrown for a total of 22 yards in his previous four years.
And Stucker wasn’t even named the starting quarterback this season until nine days ago.
As a kid in Parker, Stucker dreamed of playing quarterback for the Rams. It took a while. As a junior at Ponderosa High School, he was the quarterback for the state champions. Both CSU and CU were interested. He chose Fort Collins over Boulder.
Stucker was redshirted as a freshman, and “I was in this stadium when we lost the last time here.” The Rocky Mountain Showdown would then be played in Denver, but Stucker always wanted to come back to Folsom and play. In 2006 Stucker didn’t play a down, and as a sophomore he appeared in one game, as a wide receiver. Last season Stucker made four brief appearances and threw only three passes.
Truth is, Stucker wasn’t so highly thought of by coach Steve Fairchild, who brought in a junior college transfer and had three quarterbacks battling for the job. Stucker sort of became first string by default, and Fairchild mentioned, as an afterthought one day, that the inconsistent senior would be starting against CU.
Even after the startling triumph, Fairchild didn’t seem particularly moved by Stucker’s starting debut. “I thought Grant played pretty good, but I will say this in his defense. He is going to get better as the year goes on.”
What a glowing tribute to a young construction management major who was looked upon merely as silage for the Buffaloes. All the conversation was about who would start for CU, Cody Hawkins or Tyler Hansen.
Hansen didn’t play, and Stucker outplayed Hawkins. So, there.
In his first series, in a hostile ecological milieu, Stucker drove the Rams 80 yards in six plays for the touchdown. Two possessions later he drove them to another TD. On the next possession he drove them to a field goal, and to another on the last possession of the half.
“We knew coming in that one of their strengths was the secondary, but we didn’t shy away from that,” Stucker said. “What better way to make a statement than to attack their strength.”
Plus, he said, one of the real strengths “of our offense are our wide receivers, and I knew I had to put the ball in their hands and let them do what they do.”
After nine consecutive drives by the two teams in the second half produced zippo, Stucker stuck a pass 45 yards, and Fairchild sat on the ball inside the CU 3. A field goal made it 23-10, and, under a moon that was brighter up north in Colorado than in Boulder, the Buffs weren’t going to come back.
Annually, one Coloradan’s joy is another Coloradan’s misery.
Stucker said the opening series was critical for the Rams because “we had to find our rhythm. It was a good thing we found it quick because in Boulder if you don’t find it quick, it gets lost.”
The QB always waiting-to-be told me he couldn’t “even begin to comprehend how big this is. I always had confidence in my ability, but I couldn’t look into the future and see if I would ever get this opportunity or how it would turn out. I just knew I wasn’t going to walk away. It wouldn’t matter what anyone else believed. I’ve got too much pride, and I’ve come too far with the Rams to quit.”
And half a century from now, the kids will hear: “. . . And that’s how we pulled off one of the greatest victories in school history, and your granddaddy was the quarterback.”
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
