University of Colorado Athletics
Brooks: ?The Bear,? The Buffs And The Ride Of A Lifetime
July 23, 2015 | Football, B.G. Brooks
BOULDER ? Full circle.
In 1969, armed with barely enough journalistic know-how and ambition to be dangerous, I was a sports intern for a newspaper in Memphis. My first meaningful assignment: Cover University of Colorado football for a week as the Buffaloes prepped to face Alabama and legendary coach “Bear” Bryant in the Liberty Bowl.
What a week . . . and as it turned out, what a preview.
Bobby Anderson and the Buffs won (47-33) in grand fashion. So did I, meeting Eddie Crowder, who would become a close friend several decades later, and writing feature stories on Anderson, Herb Orvis and Bill Brundige, among others. At the time to a young, green as a lima bean reporter, Brundige appeared to be the largest human on the planet and Anderson the most gifted football player.
And, of course, there was the game-day experience of watching Ralphie run, which for a born-and-reared Southern kid was as close to the wild west as he'd been.
Colorado and the Rocky Mountains began a relentless call, and in 1978 good fortune appeared in the form of a job offer from the Rocky Mountain News. When the Rocky succumbed in the winter of 2009, good fortune paid another visit: An unexpected job offer arrived from CU.
Six years after signing on in Boulder and 46 years after watching Ralphie run for the first time, the game is slowing down ? which is good for a sophomore quarterback or point guard but a not-so-subtle signal for others. Drawing on another sports clich?, I'm going to let the game come to me . . . provided it can find me.
There will be more CU sporting events to attend as a part-time press box stiff and perhaps occasionally in a very odd and unaccustomed role as a spectator. Old habits, particularly cherished ones such as telling stories about people and their games, die hard.
For the final 22 years with the Rocky, my assignment was covering college sports -- primarily the Buffs but interspersed with trips to a dozen or more BCS championship games, a handful of Final Fours, conference meetings, media days and the like. Add another six years of covering CU from another perspective ? the inside out ? and that's more than half of a 46-year mostly newspaper career spent lurking/loitering around locker rooms, conference rooms and courtrooms in Boulder or wherever else Buffs news was about to break.
After the Rocky folded, little did I know that “moving to the other side” ? writing for a school's website rather than a newspaper ? awaited. It's a job I never imagined, but then I never imagined the nosedive that the newspaper industry would take. And while we're on things unimaginable, I can't see how six years at CU could have been any more eventful.
Consider: Three football coaches, two coaches each in men's and women's basketball, two athletic directors, a change in soccer coaches, the introduction of a new sport (lacrosse), moving to a new conference, and an athletic facilities improvement project that still is difficult to comprehend in terms of the mind-blowing timeline, the incredible progress, the fund raising (which continues), and how ? somehow ? it's all coming together.
But the job's real enjoyment and gratification were found in the events and the participants. For most of my career I've heard coaches say there are never enough wins. That simply didn't register during the early years on the CU football beat for the Rocky.
In 1987, the Buffs were about to take off under Bill McCartney. It wasn't a mere take off, they soared. As 'W's generated by amazingly talented players and a remarkable coach piled up, it became easy to take the wins for granted ? at least for a sportswriter.
Planning Christmas around bowl trips became as common in the Brooks household as hanging stockings. For nearly a decade, after towing one large suitcase reserved for gifts and a string of lights to transform a hotel lamp into a “Christmas tree,” the family celebrated that grandest of mornings in some fairly scenic locales ? Miami, Honolulu, San Diego to name three.
Given the blinding success of those years, it was impossible to see the crash that was looming for the Buffs ? the seven consecutive seasons without a bowl trip. But very soon now, you can say goodbye to that distasteful string and welcome a more appealing one. Not-so-bold prediction: Better times are coming in CU football.
THERE WERE MANY CAREER highpoints that didn't originate in Boulder, or at various regular-season stops in three conferences (Big Eight, Big 12, Pac-12) or in numerous national championship games. Before settling in to chase Buffaloes, the job offered . . . .
- A taste of SEC football (and Southern extremes) covering Ole Miss football in the season (1971) that the football program was integrated. Very strange and interesting time; wish I had kept better notes . . . .
- An interview with “The Bear” in his luxurious (even then) office in Tuscaloosa. I was scared nearly, ah, speechless but he was gracious and all but guided me through it. A dozen or so years later, working for the Rocky, I covered another Liberty Bowl (1982). It featured Alabama vs. Illinois and would be Bryant's final game. He retired with a win, then died just over a month later . . . .
- A chance to meet and interview another coaching legend ? John Wooden ? at the 1973 NCAA Final Four in St. Louis. Wooden's team, UCLA, featured Bill Walton, who went 21-of-22 from the field in the championship game as the Bruins dispatched a very good Memphis State team. Last season in the Coors Events Center I reminded Walton of that game and told him of my memories. In perhaps his most humble moment ever, Walton said, “Yeah, we had a good coach.” . . . .
- Another Final Four assignment ? the first ever staffed by the Rocky. It happened to be in Salt Lake City in 1979 and happened to match couple of guys named Johnson and Bird . . . .
- Coverage of half a dozen Super Bowls, including the first won by the Broncos (1997, SB XXXII vs. Green Bay in San Diego), and a place in the press box at Chicago's Soldier Field in 1984 when Walter Payton broke Jim Brown's 20-year old rushing record . . . .
- Trips to a dozen BCS championship games, including the 2006 Rose Bowl when Texas and quarterback Vince Young stunned Southern California and Reggie Bush 41-38. Few sporting events measure up to the pregame hype; this one surpassed it. It's still among the most dramatic events I've seen.
BUT MANY OF THE ENDEARING, indelible memories came courtesy of the Buffs, such as:
- The '89 Buffs huddled pregame at midfield in Washington's Husky Stadium on their knees, pointing skyward in their first game following the death of quarterback Sal Aunese. That CU team might have been better, more focused and driven, than the one that won it all (or most of it) the following season . . . .
- The '90 Buffs winning their share of the national championship in the Orange Bowl ? despite punting to the “Rocket.” Great players made great plays, but backups made the night. Charles Johnson filled in at quarterback for the injured Darian Hagan, Paul Rose at outside linebacker for the injured Kanavis McGhee. The Buffs got an opportune late flag, sweated it out and edged Notre Dame 10-9 . . . .
- Fifth Down. Seven weeks earlier in Columbia, Mo., “CJ” came up large at QB, scoring (or not) a controversial “fifth down” touchdown to defeat Missouri, 33-31. I kept a play-by-play on a legal pad then and have ever since, so the Buffs' extra down didn't catch me by surprise as it did some colleagues. It was easily my most surreal fourth quarter and postgame ever, but another finish four seasons later (1994) also sits high on the list . . . .
- The Miracle at Michigan. Kordell Stewart's “Hail Mary” 64-yard pass to Michael Westbrook ? with a big tip from Blake Anderson ? dumbfounded college football and the Wolverines, 27-26. I almost missed it all. With the Buffs trailing 26-14 with just under 3 minutes to play, I left the press box in “The Big House” to go to the sidelines. By the time I got to the field, CU had scored (now trailing 26-21), had forced Michigan into a three-and-out, and had 6 seconds, one play and one miracle left . . . .
- The 1994 CU-Iowa State game. The pregame storyline was eventual Heisman Trophy winner Rashaan Salaam targeting a 2,000-yard rushing season and becoming one of then only four players to reach that milestone. He got it ? and became a sidebar. As I walked off of Folsom Field toward the locker room, former offensive line coach Terry Lewis fell in beside me and said, almost in a whisper, “He's leaving.” To which I replied, “Yeah, not surprising . . . turning pro has been the speculation for weeks.” Lewis glared at me. “Not Salaam, McCartney!” About that time, I rounded a corner in the hallway leading to the Buffs locker room and saw McCartney, Athletic Director Bill Marolt and CU President Judith Albino huddled and speaking in hushed tones. I did hear this fragment of a sentence from Albino: “. . . change your mind?” McCartney didn't, and a long Saturday night in the Folsom press box followed.
- On the non-football front, covering the Buffs' first Pac-12 cross country championship (2011 in Litchfield Park, Ariz.) was, well, a kick. A double kick, in fact. The Buffs' men and women won their first championships in the “Conference of Champions,” with more on the way from Mark Wetmore & Co. . . .
- Not far behind on the large hoot list was being in L.A.'s Staples Center that same season (2011-12) to chronicle Tad Boyle's Buffs winning the inaugural Pac-12 men's basketball tournament. Four gutsy wins in four grinding nights, the last being 53-51 against Arizona. They came a decade apart (2003-2013), but I covered two CU wins over Kansas. In Boulder. Still waiting for a 'W' in Allen Fieldhouse . . . .
- And there were the Ceal Barry seasons in women's basketball, when the Buffs winning conference championships and running deep into the NCAA Tournament nearly became a given.
SOME LASTING MEMORIES HAVE nothing to do with what happened on fields, courts or courses:
- Rental car keys were lost at the '90 championship game in Miami. After half an hour's frantic search by the Rocky contingent in the old Orange Bowl press box, the keys were found dangling in the vehicle's trunk lock in the press parking lot. They'd hung there untouched for about eight hours. Nothing short of miraculous, considering the old stadium's whereabouts . . . .
- Arriving to cover a CU-Kansas football game in 1990 with about four minutes remaining ? in the fourth quarter. A Saturday morning flight carrying another Rocky reporter and myself was canceled. We finally took off about 30 minutes after the kickoff in Lawrence, landed in Kansas City and pulled into the stadium parking lot in Lawrence when some KU fans were leaving a Buffs blowout (41-10). Fortunately, the Rocky's coverage didn't reflect our misfortune ? and I waited two days before telling my editors about the misadventure . . . .
- At the Buffs' Cotton Bowl game against Oregon in 1996, the Dallas weather was dismal. Cold, drizzly, sleety. Inside the press box, fogged windows made seeing the field a challenge. A fellow print wag swore that an onion rubbed on the inside of a window would eliminate fog and condensation. Worked in his car, he said. Some fools in his presence paid attention, and since burgers and the fixings had been served in the press box, onion slices were available. Windows were “onionized.” The fog remained. So did the stench. By the fourth quarter it was close to covering the Buffs' 38-6 win from inside a cheeseburger.
Being locked in college arenas or NFL stadiums wasn't that uncommon, and many times w-a-a-a-y back in the day I dictated (for younger readers, that's reading word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence) a game story to a copy editor when press box power failed. Once, the dictation was done by firelight; a coworker and I put match to paper for enough light to dictate our typewritten copy. Typewritten?
Submitting game coverage underwent a Wright Bros. to space shuttle type of evolution, moving from typewriters, hard copy (with two carbons) and finally to a Western Union teletype operator who retyped and “wired” the story to your newspaper, to something called a telecopier (essentially a fax machine trapped in a suitcase), to primitive word processors (some scribes will remember the “Trash-80”), and eventually to laptops, iPads, etc. Telepathy might be next.
Not exactly stories from an imbedded correspondent on the front lines, but fond and lasting memories nonetheless.
In six years drawing a paycheck from CU and the two prior decades of covering the Buffs, the highlights, the drama and often the bizarre hit dizzying numbers. But those were overshadowed by the mostly good and tirelessly dedicated people (countless student-athletes at the forefront) who came, went, made an impact and made the final chapter “on the other side” interesting, fulfilling and unforgettable.
Coming full circle took a while, but it was an exceptional journey and an extraordinary blessing. All the best to all the Buffs.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
