BOULDER — You know what? Thanks, Mel Tucker. Seriously. Because of you, Ralphie’s getting ready to run live, on ESPN, before a full house at Folsom Field. In late April.
See all those people wearing CU black and gold again? Couldn’t have happened without you.
Without you taking the money and running, Buffs football doesn’t crash, then burn. There’s no Karl Dorrell, no mass transfers, no scraping rock bottom, no 1-11. And no Coach Prime.
Without you grabbing the cash, CU isn’t bringing Chris Fowler home to call a game at 2400 Colorado Ave., for the first time in over a decade.
Without you rolling in dough, Saturday’s party doesn’t happen. The Buffs aren’t the only college football program whose spring game is featured live on ESPN. A scrimmage at Folsom Field isn’t sold out weeks in advance.
“And they paid to get in,” Fowler told me earlier this month, “and thatap something else thatap unusual for a spring game. When Alabama and Georgia are drawing those record crowds, they’re (getting in) free. At least they used to be.
“I think itap a very clear indication of fan-base enthusiasm. Itap the only time they can sort of vote and right now, they’re voting by going to the game. And some of them are coming in from a distance, they’re driving in from wherever to be there for what is, very loosely, a scrimmage.”
So thanks, Mel. For real. Without you going for the Green (and White), up at Michigan State, Fowler wouldn’t be narrating his first football action at Folsom since Sept. 18, 2008, when he was at the microphone for CU’s 17-14 overtime win over West Virginia.
“For me, itap just going to be really awesome to walk into Folsom Field and see the Buffs on the field and the stadium full,” said Fowler, the renowned ESPN personality and a Buffs alum (Class of ’85) who graduated from Palmer High in Colorado Springs.
“I don’t care if itap a spring game, if itap a full moon at midnight, whatever, it’ll be good to see the energy in this place thatap been lacking.
“You go from no hope to hope and you go from hope to belief. And I think there’s belief, and (the fans) want to be shown a reason why their belief is justified. And then their belief becomes confidence.”
And confidence isn’t something new CU coach Deion Sanders has been known to … lack.
“Man, it’s supposed to be like that,” Sanders said recently when asked about the Buffs’ first-ever spring game sellout. “And that’s the way I think. I think my last stop (at Jackson State), we did some things that hadn’t been done. We broke some attendance records that have never been broken. Everywhere we played, it was a sellout, which was unfathomable (at an) HBCU …
“This is the way we think. That’s what we expect. We just want everyone to prepare themselves and step their games up so that when we do have company in town, we’re ready.”
Without Tucker breaking the bank, the Buffs wouldn’t be rolling out the carpet Saturday for a cavalcade of stars.
Fowler will be joined on the telecast by former Baylor great Robert Griffin III and Quint Kessenic. Even more celebrities — and maybe some surprise guests — could be on the docket.
“There’s a wish list,” Fowler intimated, a list that includes some big-time former CU players.
As for the scrimmage itself, Fowler, an ESPN staple since 1986, said to expect something interactive, a “very non-conventional broadcast … itap going to be experimental. I think itap going to be more talk show than game broadcast.
“You think (Sanders) is not going to want the microphone? I’m sure he’ll have his own. It’ll be interesting to see how the show goes. I’m excited about it.”
He’s just as excited about the Coach Prime trajectory, the way all arrows keep pointing north.
“My reaction was, ‘Yes, itap a little bit of an unusual hire in terms of his background,’” Fowler recalled. “But when you have no pulse, you need to pull the paddles out and initiate an electric shock. They got the defibrillator out and after that, the patient is alive and kicking and not just making progress — itap standing, walking, running, and all those things. Now you’ve got to keep moving.
“No one knows how long this show is going to stay in town. And I think the alums and the supporters are correct to be wary of it, because there’s such a fluidity in the sport these days, with coaches moving around and coaches starting to build and then finding out there’s a better deal, a little more money somewhere else.
“I don’t know what would’ve happened if Mel had stayed. Nobody does.”
From what Tucker told folks privately four years ago, 2023 was setting up to be a landmark, telling year for CU football.
Turns out Mel was right. And for that, Buffs fans should thank him Saturday, heart to heart, shoulder to shoulder. From the mountaintop.
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