Plati-'Tudes From Pac-12 Media Day

Welcome to a notes and comment column in its 19th year, penned by CU Associate Athletic Director David Plati, who yesterday began his 36th year as the Buffaloes' director of sports information.

Plati-'Tudes No. 110 ... This is now the ninth Pac-12 Football Media Day the Buffaloes have participated in; finished last in the summer poll in the South Division 35 voters; 46 points: 11 fifth place votes, 24 sixth-place). Okay, experts, we will surprise some folks this year, I am convinced … It's the 150th anniversary of the first college football game (1869; Princeton-Rutgers); the final score was Rutgers Queensmen 6, New Jersey Tigers 4 (yes, Princeton was known as the College of New Jersey back then) … Pac-12 schools added to its record count of NCAA Championships, claiming 14 titles in 2018-19, including CU's women's cross country title.

Opening Trivia
CU—This football letterman is among a small group that made the longest "road" trip in history. Name him!
Music—Thanks to the popular 1988 movie, Dirty Dancing, this song hit the charts twice, first at its peak, No. 3 in 1962, and then reaching No. 11 the second time around. Name the song and the group.
Name That Tune—From 1971: "Go ahead and hate your neighbor … go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, you'll be justified in the end."

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Quick Hits
The trip has become really expensive, so just three media folks here from Colorado: Henry Chisholm (are new beat person from BSNDenver); and Ron Milhorn and Brock Joseph (KTMS-Radio, Glenwood). Couple of others with Colorado ties, Joel Klatt (FOX), Rick Neuheisel (CBS/SiriusXm) and CU grad Andrew Haubner ('16), the sports director at KEZI-TV in Eugene … There are 18 Colorado Buffaloes in NFL training camps, a total that includes five rookies (included in that count is WR Juwann Winfree, the first CU player drafted by the Denver Broncos since Laval Short in 1980 … Not too pleased ESPNU dogged QB Steve Montez on its QBR (quarterback rankings) graphic. Montez was ranked 53rd last year (one spot behind UA's Khalil Tate) and listed two behind Steven. Not sure how you leave Montez, who has set 34 school records, off that list … Dave Flemming and Kelly Stouffer will be behind the mikes for ESPN for the CU-CSU game in Denver on August 30.

Media Day Take-Aways
A potpourri of what was covered/discussed here:

Vegas Here We Come. Commissioner Larry Scott announced that the Pac-12 Championship game will move to the new home of the Oakland Raiders – Las Vegas Stadium – for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. A more centrally location, but if we still kickoff at 5 p.m. PST, negotiating I-15 won't be much fun (drove by it on the way here, it's monstrous), but if you know Vegas, rush hour is a challenge (though much better than the Bay Area). Looks like there will be plenty of parking, though.

L.A., too. The Pac-12 will have a revamped bowl schedule starting in 2020. First, the Las Vegas Bowl will have a Pac-12 school pitted against either a Big Ten or SEC team in rotating years in the new stadium. And in Los Angeles' new stadium, the new Los Angeles Bowl will be a Pac-12 versus Mountain West affair.

Mel's Top Quotes of the Day:

"I've taken a little bit of something from every place that I've coached. At the end of the day, I have to be myself, and the team is going to be a reflection of me and how I believe the game of football should be played."

"The experiences I've had have been a tremendous asset for me moving forward. There are going to be some things from Bama, from Georgia, from Ohio State that I've learned and that I'm going to install in Boulder."

"I've been blessed. I've been around a lot of great coaches that have invested in me and that have really poured into me what they know, and that's a big part of who I am today, is the guys that I've been around, the coaches I worked for and worked with."

Pac-12 Network and DirecTV. Sorry to report (again), but nothing new on the horizon. However, Apple TV has added it to its app, and that will apparently reach 25 million more homes.

The Pregame. The Pac-12's version of College Game Day returns for a second season; it's an hour version live from campus about 90 minutes prior to kickoff. This year's visit to Boulder will be for the Nebraska game on Sept. 7.

Key recommendations from the independent review of the league's football officials:

The head of officiating to report directly to the Commissioner rather than the football administrator;
Adoption of a new replay manual codifying processes and procedures that will eliminate the potential for an incident like the one in last year's Washington State v. USC game reoccurring;
Enhancements to training programs for officials, and more consistency in grading and training from the officiating supervisors; and
A new communications protocol with more transparency and public comment around significant calls or errors that either impact player safety or the result of the game.

Chiaverini's Promotion. I was a little surprised that Darrin Chiaverini will be only the 13th assistant coach to hold the title of assistant head coach. It's a short but prestigious list starting with John Mason (1931-33, for William Saunders); John Polonchek (1959-61, for Sonny Grandelius); Rudy Feldman (1963-67, for Eddie Crowder); Jerry Claiborne (1971, for Crowder); Doug Dickey (1979, for Chuck Fairbanks); Ron Dickerson (1982-84; for Bill McCartney); Lou Tepper (1986-87, for McCartney); Bob Simmons (1993-94, for McCartney); Chris Strausser (2006, for Dan Hawkins); Jeff Grimes (2007-08, for Hawkins); Brian Cabral (2009-10, for Hawkins); and Rip Scherer (2011-12, for Jon Embree).

Schedule I. When Colorado opened with Colorado State and Nebraska last year, it was just the 13th time a school opened with back-to-back traditional rivals since the advent of 11 game regular seasons schedules beginning in 1971; and of the previous 12 time, only five schools did it (Boise State, Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico State and Temple). Fast-forward to 2019, and the Buffaloes are opening with three traditional rivals: Colorado State in Denver, Nebraska in Boulder and Air Force in Boulder. The Buffaloes and Falcons will meet at Folsom Field on Sept. 14 – the first meeting between the schools since 1974; this be just the second time CSU and AFA appear on the schedule in the same year, along with 1958. After that season, the series with CSU went dormant for 25 years while Air Force appeared every year except one between 1958 and 1974.

Schedule II. Colorado has played Colorado State (90), Nebraska (70) and Air Force (16) a combined 176 times; the remaining nine schools on CU's schedule in 2019 have combined to play the Buffaloes 165 times (and 65 of those by CU's other top 20th century rival, Utah).

Schedule III. Colorado, which did not play an FCS team until 2006, is one of 16 schools in 2019 who will play strictly FBS teams over the course of the entire season. The Big Ten Conference has 11 of those 16 schools, as it came out with a mandatory rule a few years back to eliminate those teams from their future schedules (Indiana, Maryland and Penn State had previous games scheduled further out). CU is joined by Southern California, Stanford and UCLA in the Pac-12, with the only other school nationally being Texas. Only three FCS schools appear on future CU schedules: Northern Colorado (2021), North Dakota State (2024) and Colgate (2027).

NFF Report. CU grad ('70) and president of the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame Steve Hatchell dropped by our annual SID meeting on Tuesday. He tossed some very interesting numbers at us, most notably that there are over 81,000 college football players at all levels, and 99.6 percent don't go on to the NFL; they go on to other careers. The NFF is very academic oriented with the Campbell Award, in addition to fighting for the integrity of the game and a lot of misinformation out there.

Hale Irwin Named Payne Stewart Award winner for 2019. The most successful professional golfer in our history, Hale Irwin (65 wins between the PGA and Champion tours), was named this week as the recipient of the Payne Stewart Award (see release on CUBuffs.com). A most prestigious honor, CNN interviewed Hale live on the day he received word; here's the link to that clip: https://app.frame.io/presentations/38b16482-f0f4-4acf-840d-5593807f2ec0.

The P-'Tudes Mailbag
Q: Do you have a favorite game or memory against those three rivals, CSU, Nebraska and Air Force?
A: Some games stand out for different reasons. It's easy to pick the big wins against any of them, which would match most of you out there. Some of the ones with special memories would be the renewal of the CSU rivalry in 1983 (a 31-3 CSU win) and my first CU-Nebraska game in 1978 (a 14-14 tie at halftime, clouds rolled in and we lost, 52-14). I've never been or even watched a CU-Air Force game, the series became dormant after 1974 (I was 14 and living back in New York), and in those days, it didn't make the cut for television.

Q: Congrats on your CoSIDA Hall of Fame induction. What are you most proud of?
A: I view that as an office accomplishment, and I'm most proud of the 100-plus students we've put into PR professions since I was named SID in 1984.

This P-'Tudes Number(s): 53
That is the combined number of seasons coached come this year by ski coach Richard Rokos (30) and women's golf coach Anne Kelly (23). Rokos will join Frank Potts (41 years, cross country & track) and Charles Vavra (32, men's gymnastics) as the only people to coach a team 30 seasons at CU. As for Kelly, she will become the longest tenured woman's coach in Colorado history, breaking a tie with Ceal Barry, who coached the women's basketball team from 1983-2005.

Trivia Answers
CU—With America celebrating the 50th anniversary last Saturday of Apollo 11 and man stepping foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, this was a most fitting question. One of the three men who traveled the furthest away from Earth (due to where the Moon was located during their mission) was a Colorado Buffalo. Jack Swigert, a '53 CU graduate, lettered from 1950-52 at guard (teammates included Tom Brookshier and Carroll Hardy). He was the command module pilot for the ill-fated Apollo 13, the mission dubbed a "successful failure" as the ship made it back to Earth after orbiting the moon despite an oxygen tank explosion in April 1971.   Swigert's fellow astronauts were Jim Lovell and Fred Haise; Swigert was played by actor Kevin Bacon in the 1995 movie Apollo 13 depicting the journey; with Hollywood often taking liberties, it was Swigert who said the famous line, "Houston, we've had a problem," not Tom Hanks delivering it as Lovell. The three men flew 248,655 miles away from Earth, the furthest distance ever recorded by humans, putting their round trip mileage at 497,310 miles. (Swigert wasn't supposed to be on that mission; he replaced Ken Mattingly 48 hours prior when Mattingly was exposed to the measles and was removed from the flight.)
Music— The song was Do You Love Me, the group was The Contours. The group, still active as of 2015, boasted 32 different bandmates in its history.
Name That Tune—One Tin Soldier, by Coven and the movie Billy Jack. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPNDBEuKCdY.

"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.

Players Mentioned

Juwann Winfree

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