Indiana – My first home game / Sports Illustrated & Chuck Fairbanks’ desk


— September 27th – Boulder           Indiana 49, Colorado 7 — Fresh off the near comeback at Baton Rouge, there was at least some cause for hope against visiting Indiana.  After all, the Buffs had beaten the Hoosiers the previous year in Bloomington, 17-16.  In the 1979 game, Colorado had given Chuck Fairbanks his first win as the Buffs’ head coach.  On that day, an 0-3 CU squad had beaten a 3-0 Indiana team, and had done so on the road.  With that backdrop of cautious optimism, a crowd of 40,219 …

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— September 20th –  at LSU          LSU 23, Colorado 20 — Playing at Louisiana State the second week of the season, Colorado faced an LSU team that had been to bowls the previous three seasons, but was still looking to improve.  After consecutive 8-4 seasons, the Tigers had managed a 7-5 record in 1979.  Still, the 1979 Tiger squad had been good enough to embarrass the Buffs in Boulder, 44-0. LSU came into the 1980 game 1-1 on the new season, having been shut out by Florida State (16-0), and returning …

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— National and Big Eight recap – 1980 — In college football in 1980 it was the Year of the Dog – as in the Bulldogs from the University of Georgia. Georgia went 12-0, earning its 2nd-ever national championship by defeating Notre Dame, 17-10, in the Sugar Bowl. The Bulldogs were led by running back Herschel Walker. Notre Dame finished the season on a two game losing streak, falling to 9-2-1 in Dan Devine’s last season as head coach. In the Big Eight, Oklahoma continued its domination of the league. …

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— CU AT THE GAME – An Introduction — Beginning in the fall of 1980, my freshman year at the University of Colorado in Boulder, I began to accumulate large quantities of CU memorabilia. Programs, newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, pennants, hats, and clothing were acquired and stored.  Each year, the stack of memories pertaining to the CU football team grew.  I never had any inkling, however, that these boxes of “stuff” would ever amount to anything, much less a “book”.  Still, over the next fifteen years, through several moves, I …

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