Plati-'Tudes: Our Latest Hall of Fame Class

Welcome to a notes and comment column in its 17th year, penned by CU Associate Athletic Director David Plati, who is now in his 34th year as the Buffaloes' director of sports information.

Plati-'Tudes No. 106 … I'm adhering to more P-'Tudes, as this makes three in four weeks … Thanks to all you who sent well-wishes as I deal with a circulatory/infection issue with my left leg. It's healing nicely—the folks down at Anschutz' Wound Clinic rock!

Opening Trivia

CU—Inductee Jamillah Lang scored 15 points and grabbed eight rebounds in the first-ever game the Buffaloes played the No. 1 ranked team in the nation on Dec. 20, 1993. The game was on the road—who was the opponent?
Music—The number one song when Jay Humphries suited up for the last time as a Buff was an extremely popular song the spring and summer of 1984. The name of the song is often one of the first words you hear when a basketball game starts. Bonus: it also has a tie to CU.
Name That Tune—This song ruled the roost for quite a while when Jorge Torres arrived on campus as a freshman in August of 1999; what song is this passage from: "I feel like I've been locked up tight … For a century of lonely nights … Waiting for someone to release me …"

Quick Hits

This special Hall of Fame edition has some personal thoughts of the class … you can check out the original release or the Hall of Fame website. We also had our students write features on each inductee (check them out on CUBuffs.com) and our own Neill Woelk wrote about last night's induction, as well.

Thoughts on the Class

This is easily one of the most enjoyable nights we host every year – and I can say every year thanks to athletic director Rick George, who okayed inducting a new class every year instead of every two years as was the norm for the first 15 years of the Hall. We began in 1998 with a single inductee (Byron White) and had classes in 1999 and 2000 before skipping a year until 2014, when we started annual inductions. If you have never had the chance to attend this event—it's open to the public and the cost is minimal—it's a night that any CU fan needs to put on his or her bucket list.

Stan Brock (football '79) was the first up … he brought all his grandchildren up with him, and made a special point that when he would be taped for the starting lineup intros, he would always say, "Stan Brock, University of Colorado."

(In 1978, I was a freshman when Stan was a junior. Playing offensive guard briefly in high school as a 5-foot-9 shrimpo, I was right not to have any aspirations of playing in college after seeing this behemoth. He cleared holes, huge holes, for guys like James Mayberry, Bill Solomon, Mike Kozlowski, Jeff Hornberger and Eddie Ford.)

Chad Brown (football '92) was next … he told a story where he had to sing Bill Wither's song, Lean on Me, before the team early in his career, and then a mini-roll call of some of the great players he had a privilege of playing with and a special shout out to his position coach, Brian Cabral, citing that words he said still rang true 20 years later.

(Chad would have won more honors, but was the victim of what we just saw with Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado – he and Greg Biekert robbed votes from each other, otherwise I am convinced to this day that one or the other would have won the Butkus Award over Florida State's Marvin Jones. We were in the midst of being "Linebacker U," with Alfred Williams and Kanavis McGhee before this duo and Ted Johnson and Matt Russell following).

Karrie Downey (volleyball '95) took to the stage next. Known for a record number of kills (if you don't know, a volleyball stat), she once passed cross country and track coach Mark Wetmore in the Dal Ward Center and he said to her, "You know all that killing you're doing is going to lead to bad karma." Her coach, the first in our team's history, Brad Saindon, returned for her induction.

(Karrie along with Nicole Vranesh, a previous inductee into the Hall, were the first real stars of our fledgling volleyball program, which was born in 1986. The two helped CU to its first Big 8 crown in 1993, which was quite an achievement to unseat Nebraska that quick.)

Mark Fowler accepted the honor for his late father Les, who was a golfer for the Buffs from 1945-48, and then toward the end of his career took on the role as player coach, before going on to coach the team through the end of the 1976 calendar year, or 29 years in all.

(Les, of course turned the reins of the program over to his assistant, Mark Simpson, who would also coach the team for 29 years until his death in December 2005; Roy Edwards took over the program the following summer and is now in his 12th year. There might be more job security as the CU men's golf coach than any other job out there. Les is a state legend in the game of golf; he easily could have turned professional but instead chose to be a family man and a longtime insurance agent, and along the way, win a host of state amateur titles).

Steve Hatchell (administration '70) was recognized next, one of the unique members of the Hall, starting as a student football manager (and CU's yearbook editor), and had a meteoric rise in the sports world, for co-SID at CU to the Metro Conference, Orange Bowl, Southwest Conference, Big 12 Conference and to where he has been for 13 years, the CEO of the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame. He spoke of his CU roots, as then-athletic director Eddie Crowder put him on the path to the success career he has experienced since. He also acknowledged his longtime friendship with Bill Marolt, dating to when he was Marolt's right hand man with CU's national championship teams in the 70s to when he took over the U.S. Ski Team in 1979 (and both were privileged to see the U.S. defeat the Russians at Lake Placid in 1980).

(I met Hatch early on in my career, when I was a student assistant for Tim Simmons. When he got to the Orange Bowl as its executive director, he did an excellent job of hiding the fact that he wanted us to kick Notre Dame's behind. But what Hatch has done is that he has made the College Football Hall of Fame a club to all schools, not just the apparent dozen or so that always seemed to get the lion's share of inductees.)

One of my early favorites as a player, Mark Haynes (football '79) was inducted next. He pimped me a bit, telling the crowd that we were classmates in the late 70s, and he went on to do many things but that I'm still here. He recollected how he met his wife on the CU campus and 37 years later they're still married with two daughters. His high school coach and his Buff parents came to honor him, which when you think about it, is pretty cool.

(I always thought he had one of the coolest position names in our history—generally a cornerback, his position was tagged, "Apache Back." That '79 team produced two first team All-Americans, Mark and Stan Brock—it was 3-8 under Chuck Fairbanks—and only because we won our last two against KU and K-State—but should have been so much better. Mark once told me the staff came in and it was like they had the New England Patriots playbook to learn, and most didn't figure it out until late in the season. And being from New York, I found it awesome that he was drafted by the Giants and my relatives could watch a Buff.)

Jay Humphries (basketball '84), followed. Likely our biggest hoops star between Scott Wedman in the mid-70s and Shaun Vandiver in the late 80's. He spoke about how his high school friends asked him, "Why Colorado? You can stay around here and we can see you play." He said simply, "My visit." One of many who comes over Davidson Mesa and sees the breakout of Boulder and is hooked from the get-go.

(Jay was a magician with the basketball. A master of the top-of-the-key jumper, which by the way, was worth only two points when he played, or he'd have another 150 or 200 points. One game sticks out in my memory – an 81-66 win over Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a junior. He may have had a double-double never before seen: 21 points and 10 STEALS. Steals didn't begin as a statistic until the early 1970s when the American Basketball Association started tracking it, so not a lot of history where somebody made 10 steals.)

Sticking with basketball, Jamillah Lang (basketball '94) was next. She spoke about how she was hoping for the phone call to come from Rick George (who personally notifies each inductee once selected), and that how the call came on her birthday. She also credited her college coach, the legendary Ceal Barry, for the role she played in her personal success. Her high school coach also traveled to town to celebrate the honor, as did her best friend to this day and teammate, Rhonica McKinney.

(During her speech, she reminded me of one of the cool things that is actually tied to Rashaan Salaam; on senior night in February '94, we passed out signs that simply had the letter "J" … the largest crowd of the regular season, some 8,500-plus, were going crazy waving them around. Later that fall, that moment gave birth to the idea for the 2,000 signs when Salaam would reach that mark in the season finale.)

Jorge Torres (cross country & track '03) was next, and he mentioned how he and his twin brother Eduardo had two goals when he came to CU, to get an education and to bring the school a national championship.

Jorge Torres

Eduardo Torres

(Both he and his brother look like they haven't aged a day, meaning it was still practically impossible to tell them apart. There really wasn't Internet streaming back in 2002 when Jorge won the NCAA Cross Country title, so you had to keep refreshing the agate page every few seconds to get an update—and then hope a correction wouldn't come through later. Jorge was wedged between two of our Olympians on the men's side, Adam Goucher and Dathan Ritzenhein, so he's often forgotten in our run of great distance runners, so it was good to see him get this honor. And he remembered that I used to feed the Fieldhouse Annex squirrels because track and sports info were the only ones housed in the building.)

And finally (and I guess we were a little alphabetically challenged), the induction of the late Frank Brown (skiing '59) wrapped up the evening. Our first All-American in the sport that would earn the school 20 national championships. His wife, Judy, was joined on stage by his daughter, who spoke on behalf of the family, and granddaughter. She said how he was called "Twinkletoes" on the slopes, despite the team mantra of, "When the going gets tough, the tough get tougher."

(I was also the skiing SID from 1985 until a few years ago. When Bill Marolt was hired as athletic director in the summer of '84, I was a little nervous when he called me into his office—you see, I was the last hire by Eddie Crowder before he retired as AD. Bill was cool, but he gave me some very stern advice—"You will treat skiing like it's football." I knew less than zilch if that's possible about the sport, but once I paid attention to it, you fall in love with the intricacies, like how a half-second win over two runs in the slalom is a blowout, and the dedication of the athletes. And me being me, a history Buff, I started to look back at past achievements and soon came to realize that before Buddy Werner, Jimmie Heuga and Bill Marolt, our first true stud in the sport was Frank Brown.)

The P-'Tudes Mailbag

Q: (Follow-up) Any idea when the Pac-12 will release the 2018 football schedule?
A: All indications are the conference will release much earlier than anticipated, possibly as soon as late next week or early the following week. We were void of any conference weeknight games in 2017, so most likely at least one could be on the schedule.

This P-'Tudes Number(s): 101

The induction of the 10 latest members into the Hall brings the total number of individuals to 101, not including the 1959 NCAA Champion ski team, which was inducted as a unit in the 2006 class. Since then, head coach Bob Beattie and now Frank Brown have gone in as individuals.

Trivia Answers

CU—No. 1 Tennessee; CU was ranked No. 7 and pushed the Lady Vols to the max, losing 86-82 in overtime. The Buffs (in their first year no longer known as the "Lady Buffs") trailed 34-26 at halftime but pulled even at 68 at the end of regulation.
Music—Van Halen's "Jump." The tie to CU? Aric Van Halen ran cross country and track earlier this decade; he's the son of Alex Van Halen, the group's drummer, Alex.
Name That Tune—Genie in a Bottle, by Christina Aguilera, spent five weeks in the top spot in the summer of '99.

"Plati-'Tudes" features notes and stories that may not get much play from the mainstream media; offers Plati's or CU's take on issues raised by those who have an interest in the program; answers questions and concerns; and provides CU's point of view if we should disagree with what may have been written or broadcast. Have a question or want to know CU's take on something? E-mail Dave at david.plati@colorado.edu, and the subject may appear in the next Plati-'Tudes.

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