Plati-'tudes
March 12, 2001
Ah, March Madness. The greatest time of the year for office pools, except the NCAA views them as a form of gambling and those of us with University paychecks can't participate. We stopped ours five years ago, and I'm still going through withdrawal.
TRIVIA QUESTIONS... CU -- Who was the first head coach of a major sport Eddie Crowder hired during his tenure as athletic director at Colorado (1965-84)? Godfather -- Why were there tensions between the real life actors who played Sonny (James Caan) and Carlo (Gianni Russo)? And to the fan that e-mailed in that I should switch to the Sopranos. I have to tell you, I've yet to watch a single episode. but I'm sure you and your buds will keep chanting "Dickie V" in my direction nonetheless.
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Q & A WITH A BUFF... It's the return of an occasional Q & A with someone connected with University of Colorado athletics, and this column's subject is none other than the second athletic director in CU history, Eddie Crowder. Eddie will turn 70 this August, but he looks almost exactly the same as the day he retired back in 1984. A reserve quarterback on Oklahoma's 1950 national championship team, he started the next two years for the Sooners, leading them to a 16-3-1 mark. He went on to work as an assistant for seven years under his college coach, the late Bud Wilkinson, and he was hired as the 17th head football coach in CU history on Jan. 3, 1963. He picked up the pieces of a program shattered by NCAA sanctions following the 1961 season and eventually guided CU to a 67-49-2 record over 11 years, five bowl games (when there were only seven or eight a year) and a No. 3 final ranking in 1971, to this day the only time a conference held the top three spots in the final poll (Nebraska #1, Oklahoma #2). Along the way, he succeeded the man who hired him, Harry Carlson, as only the second athletic director in CU history (1965), and served in that role until Aug. 3, 1984. Here's a little known fact: the last person Eddie hired before he went off into the sunset? Yours truly, as he signed my paperwork on July 27, 1984, just a week prior to his last days as CU's athletic boss. Little did he know that almost two decades later, I'd be interviewing him:
Q: It's been almost 17 years since you "ruled" on the hilltop in Boulder known as CU. What have you been doing since?
CROWDER: "When I retired from the University, I at the time was in the restaurant business (Eddie's Mexican Caf? in Boulder), was involved in the drilling of some oil and gas wells, and had some real estate interests in Longmont. I also had a little company that produced and marketed motivational tapes by college coaches. During that time I encountered long-time CU supporter Jack Vickers in a casual, friendly visit, and he invited me to be part of the marketing staff for his International golf tournament. It had high TV ratings and good response from the players, so the only link that they felt hadn't come up to their expectations were some of the sports marketing aspects. So Jack asked me to come be a part of that, and I did it on a consulting basis for the first tournament and then worked as the marketing director for four more years. I basically then retired, but built an Amway business during that time and have had successful ventures with it in Mexico. So with all that, I guess I'm really in semi-retirement because we monitor that business, but we (he and his wife, Kate) have a lot of freedom. We spend a lot of time literally coaching again, helping young people build networks, mentoring them, making ourselves available to them."
Q: What do you miss most about college athletics?
CROWDER: "My time in intercollegiate athletics was a highly enjoyable experience, so I look back at it with a lot of fond memories but don't look at it now in a state of remorse of not having to go to work every day. We're fortunate to live here close to the University (in North Boulder), and they've been good to have us at events we want to attend. We've had the opportunity to be close observers without having to be responsible for anything in particular."
Q: Have you stayed in touch with any of the coaches you've hired during the years?
CROWDER: "We communicate with quite a number of the guys, though on an irregular basis. But I stay in touch with Don James, Rudy Feldman, Chet Franklin, Steve Ortmeyer, Steve Sidwell, Augie Tammariello, among others. They've been on-going pleasant relationships, but we just haven't had chances to get together often because we're all over the country."
Q: What is the one game that stands out the most in your time as CU coach?
CROWDER: "I have to think there are three that all run on par. One, the victory over Nebraska in 1967 in Lincoln for a number of reasons (see a later comment), the second was a victory over Bear Bryant and Alabama in the '69 Liberty Bowl, and the third would be the 1972 win over Oklahoma. That game represented something I had always thought to be the greatest satisfaction in coaching, and that would be to win a classic game in which both teams were undefeated or ranked very high, and that the game was played so well as to say the team that won won, the other didn't lose it. So many big games are won by one team because the other makes some serious error, but that game was classic because there were very mistakes that affected the outcome at all. It was football at its finest." (No. 9 Colorado beat No. 2 Oklahoma 20-14 that afternoon... see next note for new cubuffs.com feature.)
Q: And is there one play, well, other than the time John Stearns about gave you a heart attack calling his own number and running for a first down on a 4th-and-9 from the CU 10 in the '71 Bluebonnet Bowl?
CROWDER: "This is an obscure one, but when we won in Lincoln (21-16 in 1967), the late Charlie Greer was a starting defensive back for us, just a great player, and he got hit in the head in the second quarter and the doctors decided at halftime that he shouldn't play anymore. His backup, Jeff Raymond, had played very little and we put him in the ball game, and he wound up intercepting a pass and returned it for a touchdown that proved to be the winning points. Here he was, a backup guy who didn't play much, in a game involving two undefeated teams, and he picks off a pass and runs it back for a touchdown. Now the real reason this play by Jeff Raymond stands out is that he told us that the night before he had a dream, and in that dream he had intercepted a pass to win the game. He went on to have a very successful career doing some commercials, modeling and even some acting." (Raymond was the spokesperson for a time in the 1970s for St. Pauli Girl.)
Q: What were some of your other most memorable moments coaching at CU?
CROWDER: "There were several. When we beat LSU in Baton Rouge to open the '71 season, it was a major upset as they were a well-established team picked to win by whatever margin, so it was just assumed that a win in Baton Rouge was highly unlikely. We went down there with a 50-man traveling squad, and 25 of them were rookies who had never been in a college game, so people obviously figured that we were unlikely to win. So that made it a major victory with national implications. And then two weeks later to go into Ohio State and win, in Columbus Ohio against Woody Hayes, combined with a very big win in-between over Wyoming in Boulder where it snowed before the game, we were minus our starting quarterback and it also happened to be the first ever at Folsom on Astroturf. So that run of three straight weeks was a very memorable experience."
Q: And your most memorable moments as athletic director?
CROWDER: "When we hired Ceal Barry, I remember telling Fred Casotti that I thought it was maybe the best hire that we ever made. She had such a wonderful pedigree in women's basketball, and was the one person in the interview process that had demonstrated the most ideal attitude. And one of the greatest satisfactions was the hiring of Bill McCartney, because of the pressure and the stress with the timing. Chuck Fairbanks left on June 1 and we decided to hire Mac on June 8 or 9, so that was about seven days without sleep. Being available to him with having gone through the same experience, having come here as a new head coach without any previous head coaching experience, that gave me the opportunity to be particularly helpful. It was and remains a great relationship."
Q: College athletics has changed quite a bit since you left; for instance, the last budget you helped determine was roughly $6.3 million for fiscal 1984-85; this year's is over four times that at $26.7 million. Do you think that it is so much more of a business and some of the fun is now gone?
CROWDER: "I don't think it's changed very much in that sense. In the 15-year period more or less since I left what was then a $6.3 million budget just on inflation alone would be $13-15 million now. It's just become more involved, women's athletics has expanded, but the overall process is the same. Managing people and events and building relationships with people, coaches, boosters. I think the vital part of that job is the personnel that you select. For example, 17 years later there are several quality people still there that we hired. But the first element of doing that job successfully is selecting people who can do their jobs very successfully. The next part of it is creating a cooperative atmosphere, where all of those people are functioning together as a team and have a pretty clear vision of where they're going. The increases in budgets aren't nearly as significant a factor as the fundamentals that you have to do in that job. Whether it's a $26 million or $15 million budget, that's a pretty significant business right there. The important factor is the personnel."
Q: If you could do one thing over again, what would it be?
CROWDER: "Beat Nebraska more. If there were one thing I would do differently, it would be some other choice than the hiring of Chuck Fairbanks (as football coach in late 1978), not because he wasn't a capable guy or coach. The consequences of the hiring and the legal problems we went through set a difficult tone for the era and it set us back. But the recovery process with McCartney being his replacement turned out so well. Hindsight is always wonderful, but in any major operation, you're going to have some judgments that at the time seem good and didn't turn as well. The important part in that instance was the recovery, as things obviously worked out well with McCartney."
Q: Everyone who knows you knows that you're an "Okie From Muskogee." What personal feelings did you experience when Oklahoma won the national championship last year?
CROWDER: "It was something we followed very closely for two or three reasons. Number one, I had been asked to be and then participated on the search committee that hired (Bob) Stoops. So when you are part of a team of people that hired a guy that turned out as well as he turned out, it gives you a feeling of closeness that otherwise would not exist. I've gotten to know him and just had dinner with him when he was in town last week, so there's been joy in watching his success. The other thing was that it was the 50th anniversary of Oklahoma's 1950 national championship team that I played on, so we went to Norman and it was a great reunion of friends and fellows that we hadn't seen in years."
Q: When people ask you what your favorite story during your tenure at CU was, what do you tell them?
CROWDER: "One that surfaces is in 1964, my second season, it's the last game of the year, we're 1-8 and playing the Air Force in Boulder. They were a good team and we were a recovering team, and they were picked to win by two, three, maybe even four touchdowns. They scored with about three minutes left to go up 23-21. Billy Symons, a running back who was tough and had good speed, came to me and said, 'Coach, if you put me in the game on the kickoff return team, I'll take it back for a touchdown.' I did and he did. We ended up winning 28-23; he took that kick, started straight up the field, made a move to the left and then just hammered his way all the way into the end zone. There were many memorable plays over the years, but I think that stands out the way it does because it was a turnaround year. The program had been devastated by an NCAA investigation, and that team of '64 wasn't deep enough or talented enough to win. We were 2-8, but it was the turnaround team and they just fought their hearts out. They re-established the right kind of character here, and we went on to become a very good team from that point on. So that one play alone was the turnaround play for the era of the '60s and '70s.
Q: You coached around 300 players as CU's head football coach. When someone asks you about those players, which ones pop into your mind first and why?
CROWDER: "What your mind does is to start scanning people. You could immediately say Bobby and Dick Anderson, Cliff Branch, J.V. Cain, Bill Brundige, Mike Montler, Herb Orvis, any number of guys. But if I had to pick somebody to represent my most memorable player, a good choice would be Frank Rogers. He was a freshman when we first arrived here, was from Del Norte, Colorado, and played quarterback in high school but didn't appear to have the makings of a QB in college. He was also a placekicker but he did didn't have many kicks in high school, sometime maybe just a single kickoff in a game. But we made him our kicker because he seemed to have that talent. As a senior, he wound up as the Big Eight's leading kick scorer and was a starting wide receiver, which he made possible because he worked so hard at it. In his last game as a senior (in 1965), he caught a long touchdown pass and had two field goals against Air Force to win the game, and it was most fitting he had that kind of day in the sun to end his career. His devotion to the team, his diligence, his attitude, represented everything you wanted to see in young people."
Q: Oklahoma's only blemish in the Big Seven was a 21-21 tie with Colorado in 1952, when you were OU's starting quarterback. Did that get Harry Carlson, your predecessor's, attention and how often did it come up once you were at CU?
CROWDER: "I don't remember it having much relevance or coming up much at all. As a matter a fact, the only thing I remember about it was that on occasion, I would have conversations with some of the CU guys who played during that time and we'd have a laugh over the game. Dick Knowlton, for instance, who was a junior at CU when I was a senior, and then Tommy Brookshier, guys I got to be good friends with, they would bring it up occasionally."
Q: It's no secret that your closest aide and confidant was Fred "The Count" Casotti. What's your favorite Count story?
CROWDER: "When he was the SID, he would send out a press release after each game, going to well over 100 newspapers and sports editors. In it he would always write a limerick or some poetry. He did it to get the sports editor to open it and read it, and therefore increase the chances of things getting printed. On one particular occasion, the poetry was a little lewd, more or less play-on words, but the sports editor of the Wichita newspaper printed it, and subsequently there were numerous complaints out of the Wichita area to the University. So Fred and I were called before the executive vice president and it was agreed that Fred would 'behave better' in that arena and put the incident behind us. I do remember standing tall for him, because he was a thoroughbred."
Q: Any regrets?
CROWDER: "No, not really. There are obviously things you would have done differently, but at the time, it's fair to say that all of the judgments made during my time at the University were of good and proper intent, but if some of them didn't work out, well that's the way life is. But I would say there aren't any regrets."
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NEW CUBUFFS.COM FEATURE... This week we are debuting CLASSIC CU, which we think will become a popular feature on our site. The idea was born out of the above interview and watching an ESPN Classic promo one night: it would be awesome if we could link to stories as written by the media of some of the great moments in our history. Curtis Snyder took that idea and has run with it; student assistants will enter in game stories that have appeared in the local newspapers covering some of greatest moments in CU athletic history, and we'll accompany with pictures and in the future, maybe even video or sound bites depending on what's available. It debuts with three memories: the above CU-Oklahoma football game Eddie Crowder referenced, and with March Madness upon us, CU's 90-67 win over Stanford in 1993 in women's hoops and the men's 93-81 win over Bradley that got the Buffs to our last Final Four in 1955.
RUMOR: Richard Fox, CU's 6-11 center, is interested in seeking a transfer out of the CU basketball program.
TRUTH: "No," said Fox, who dropped by the office this morning. "I just think it's people talking like they always do and I have no idea where that would have started. After the end every season, there's talk about people transferring everywhere, not just here, and most of it winds up being just that, talk. I heard the same thing last year and obviously I stayed here."
MILLION FAN MARCH FOLLOW-UP... A follow-up to last week's "Million Fan March" challenge the Big 12 Conference conducted for women's basketball in 2000-01. The challenge was for each school to increase attendance by 25 percent, which if accomplished, would have raised league attendance from just over 800,000 to over the million mark. Promotions director Gail Pederson reports that CU did its part, as women's attendance increased 26 percent to 44,552, averaging 2,970 per game. The Big 12 women's tournament unofficially drew 34,744 (a tournament record), increasing the conference total for the year to 816,534. Three schools will host NCAA tournament games, Iowa State, Texas Tech and Oklahoma, all number two seeds. That's possibly six more games that can be added to the total.
STREET & SMITH POLL... In a recent poll by Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, college football and basketball are doing well in a survey the publication entitled, "Fan Avidity." Last year, 56.6 of the population 12 and older were fans of college football, as that number trailed only the NFL (68.5) and major league baseball (60.9). College basketball came in sixth at 48.6, as the NBA (53.8) and figure skating (51.8) were wedged between college football and college hoops. Where's the NHL, you might ask? It came in a surprising 12th out of 15, trailing professional golf, boxing, tennis and the WNBA, but topping pro soccer, the Arena Football League and horse racing.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPORTS DAY ON ESPN CLASSIC... On St. Patrick's Day, ESPN Classic is dedicating the bulk of the day as, "Rocky Mountain Sports Day," starting at 10 a.m. mountain time. Leading off will be what's become known as, "The Miracle in Michigan," as ABC's broadcast of the 1994 Colorado-Michigan featuring Kordell Stewart's 64-yard touchdown pass after time expired to Michael Westbrook, via Blake Anderson tip gave CU a 27-26 win. Listen in particular to Keith Jackson and Bob Griese after the Buffs got the ball back with 15 seconds left on their own 15; it's some of the best set-up analysis in broadcasting history. Following the Buffaloes and Wolverines, ESPN will air game of the 1996 Stanley Cup playoffs with the Avalanche and Florida, a 1995 Rockies extra inning game with Atlanta, and Super Bowl XXXIII, John Elway's last game when Denver beat Atlanta. Here's hoping they can squeeze in the Nuggets overtime, game five playoff win at Seattle in 1994 when Dikembe Mutombo was captured on his back holding the ball above his head at the end of the game.
THIS WEEK'S NUMBER... 99.3%. Colorado gained 3,982 yards on offense a year ago, or 362.0 per game. CU rushed for 1,342 yards in 2000, and every single player who rushed for each and every yard returns for 2001; the Buffs passed for 2,640 yards, with the players responsible for 2,611 of those yards on this year's roster. The end result is probably one of the highest returning player-producing numbers in college football history -- the players producing 3,953 of those 3,982 yards are back, or 99.3 percent -- and the 29 yards unaccounted for came when a senior wide receiver (Javon Green) threw a touchdown pass to a freshman quarterback (Craig Ochs).
FINNIGAN STRIKES AGAIN... Our former assistant Matt Finnigan has this crackerjack ability at finding unique websites, perhaps second-to-none. From the man who brought you Mr. T doing Shakespeare, he has found www.jumptheshark.com, a most clever site depicting when exactly popular American television shows crossed the line and started losing their following. You have to see this one to believe it.
TRIVIA ANSWERS... CU -- The first major coaching hire Eddie Crowder made as athletic director was none other than... Irv Brown. Frank Prentup retired following the 1969 baseball season, and Irv was his replacement (major being defined as football, basketball or baseball; Crowder did bring Bill Marolt on board as ski coach for the '67-68 year and Marolt would lead CU to seven straight NCAA titles starting in 1972). Godfather -- Caan allegedly really wanted to beat up Russo in the scene where he Sonny paid Carlo a visit after he had abused the Corleone daughter, Connie. Or at least some of the fake punches or kicks actually landed and caused a few bruises.
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"Plati-'Tudes" features notes and stories that may not get much play from the mainstream media; offers 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.