Tag Archives: colorado state

Kansas trick kick-return play validates Mountain West’s hazing of Boise State

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One of the first stories we covered at this site occurred back in 2011, when the Mountain West Conference hazed new member Boise State by prohibiting them from wearing their blue uniforms in home conference games, claiming that the uniforms gave the Broncos “a competitive edge” in games played on their blue home turf, all while permitting charter conference member Colorado State to wear green uniforms in all of their conference games played on green turf. The MWC position was such a sham that even the NCAA could see it was a bad idea.

On Saturday night, though, the otherwise hapless Kansas Jayhawks showed that there might be something to this turf camouflage concern:

Not bad, but it won’t help KU hide from Charlie Weis, to whom the university still owes money.

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2013 college football bowl schedule

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Before getting to the 2013-14 college football bowl schedule and associated predictions and operations, a note on sponsored discourse. In this post-Musburger-for-all-the-Tostitos world, it is an unremarkable fact that the bowl games are not merely sponsored football contests but business entities in and of themselves, the sponsorship-style nomenclature– e.g., “the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl”– a mere reflection of the game’s less overtly monied past. Even the ostensible bastion of postseason intercollegiate purity now is known as “the Rose Bowl Game presented by Vizio.”

When a bowl game is a business, and not merely a happening, there is an associated shift in the commercial advertising language referential to that business. The NFL’s decision to prohibit the use of “Super Bowl” by non-league advertisers, who now must offer you late-January deals on new televisions for watching “the big game,” provides a rough analogy.

I understand and accept the logic behind a business’ desire to control its portrayal in other business’ advertisements and insist on inclusion of a game’s full, sponsored title in that portrayal. What I do not understand is why the news media plays along. This week, I heard a local sports talk show talk about talking about Georgia’s appearance in “the Taxslayer dot com Gator Bowl,” and that’s far from the only example. I understand that some of the sponsors have integrated their names into the bowl games’ names in such a way that it’s difficult– or, where the sponsor’s name and the bowl’s name are one and the same, impossible– to say the bowl’s name without saying the sponsor’s name as well (e.g., the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and the Capital One Bowl, respectively). “Taxslayer dot com” is a mouthful, though, and everybody already knows the Gator Bowl. “The Rose Bowl Game presented by Vizio” is ridiculous to say, and things like “the Allstate Sugar Bowl,” “FedEx Orange Bowl,” and “Tostitos Fiesta Bowl” simply are superfluous. Why the sports news media feels obligated to append these sponsor names when discussing the bowls is beyond me, and you won’t find us doing it here, unless it’s something humorous like the Beef O’Brady Bowl or the RealOakFurniture.com Bowl.

Onto the bowl schedule, which begins this Saturday.   Continue reading →

NCAA Tournament: Day 1 Recap

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spartyondrumsFor the most part, everyone did what they were supposed to do yesterday, with a few exceptions. Some of the highlights:

  • Despite some fight from Valparaiso and surrendering turnovers in spades, Michigan State pulled away to a win in the tournament’s opening game.
  • Newly anointed Gonzaga nearly blew their opportunity and almost became the first #1 seed to go down in the first round, escaping with a win over a Southern team that would not go away.
  • Harvard University, which has so little going for it, finally found some success in the realm of sport, securing its first tournament win with an upset of #3 New Mexico.
  • New Mexico State also lost yesterday, making this article really sad.
  • Colorado State’s win over continually hapless Missouri was a yawner…until it wasn’t!
  • When will we stop underseeding the Pacific Twelve? Oregon pulled one of the least surprising 12-5 upsets ever by knocking off Eddie Sutton-less Oklahoma State, while #12 Cal eked one out against #5 UNLV.
  • As usual, I got greedy with underdogs in the early rounds, so the dispatching of UNLV and Belmont wasn’t too kind to my ALDLAND bracket. (If you’re a junkie, you can see the updated standings here. We’ll do a deep analysis after the first two rounds are complete.)

On that last point, keep an eye on Ole Miss and Wisconsin today, outcome to be determined by the severity of Marshall Henderson’s inevitable hangover.

There’s a new dress code in the Mountain West Conference

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The AP reports:

Boise State players will no longer sport their all-blue uniforms for conference games on Bronco Stadium’s iconic blue turf, the result of a concession school officials say they made last year as part of the team’s entrance into the Mountain West Conference.

League Commissioner Craig Thompson said Tuesday during the league meeting that coaches believe Boise State gets a competitive edge when players wear blue helmets, jerseys and pants at home.

The Broncos have worn all blue at home for several years and built a 77-2 record and a 32-game winning streak on their home turf since 1999.

Coach Chris Petersen said his team intends to wear the signature uniforms for nonconference games against Tulsa and Nevada, but he finds the restriction for league games silly and an erosion of the team’s identity.

Beyond the silliness, there’s the obvious inconsistency with the policy, since it only applies to Boise State and not, as many have noticed, to other MWC members whose football teams wear similarly camouflaged uniforms and have done so for years. Colorado State, a charter member of the MWC, dresses its players in green and uses green turf at its home Sonny Lubick Field.

How many CSU football players appear in this picture? Craig Thompson can’t tell.