MANY DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Did you know Hughes Stadium is the one of a few remaining college stadiums where you can buy a beer? Good beer too. Last time I was there, I had a Blue Moon and watched TCU spank the Rams. It made it a bit more tolerable.

The stadium is named after former head coach Harry Hughes, who is the only football coach in CSU history to go undefeated twice, once in 1915 (7-0) and again in 1916 (6-0-1). Hughes is second in school history with a 57% winning percentage to Sonny Lubick who won 59%. Lubick also has the most bowl appearances of any CSU coach with 9. He also coached in the former WAC, where 8 teams broke off and formed the Mountain West Conference.

With a 63% winning percentage, the Mountain West has the best winning percentage in bowls than any other conference in college football. Who in the past 5 years have gone 18-5 in bowls. Where Colorado State has gone 5-7 all time in bowls. Who has a football history of 103 years and in the last 20 years has a record of 129-113. That’s a winning percentage of 53%. But in the last 10 years, CSU is 54-69. A winning percentage of 43%. Going down. Just like the beer that I’ll be putting down at Hughes Stadium, where it’s still legal.

Another issue I would like addressed is the Ring of Fame and the retirement of jersey number. Right now I see that Eddie Hanna’s #21 and Fum McGraw’s #48 are retired. That’s it. I’m not saying you should retire just anyone’s number but I think there are other candidates that should be considered.

Looks like someone already took care of it for us.

For example, Greg Myers #3. Myers played for the Rams from 92-95 and won the 1995 Jim Thorpe Award as the nation’s best Defensive Back. CSU reached #11 in the national rankings. All –American. Lots of school records, drafted and played in the NFL and I’m pretty sure this guy is a doctor now. Just a suggestion. CSU needs to connect with its great football history and acknowledge the players that got them there. I’d like to find out the exact requirements for having your jersey retired. If Myers doesn’t qualify then I’m not sure who does.

CURE BOREDOM WITH NFL SOCCER JERSEYS

In this time between recruitment signing day and spring practices, I try to find things to occupy the football mind. Ram basketball and their run to the NCAA tourney is definitely helping. The optimism of no more snow is helping. On the other hand, the ridiculous coverage of Jadeveon Clowney's signing to South Carolina that ESPN aired is not helping. The dude is huge but, give me a break ESPN and your over exploitation of crappy news. Not saying this post is any better. And neither does this bickering of sides of this NFL lockout fiasco. In the midst of all it, I was sent this interesting take on NFL cross branding. This guy took main sponsors of NFL teams and designed some pretty interesting soccer jerseys. This should occupy your time for about ten minutes so don’t blink or you’ll miss it. Click on the pics and it will take you to all the examples.

It's hard to follow up a terrific post by Mizery.

WHY THE BCS KILLS COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Submitted by Mizery
North Carolina

Life is good in the Mountain West Conference. With great satisfaction, the Mountain West, and soon to become Mountain West members, went a combined 5-2 this bowl season. In fact, I rooted for TCU and San Diego St. this past football season. I even rooted for soon to be members of the MWC, Nevada and Boise State. I thought everything was cool, but then I was struck with dread. What did these games really mean? Is this the equivalent to watching Donald Duck at Disney on Ice complete a flawless double axel, just to know that regardless of the outcome, I still had to learn my multiplication tables the next day at school? And if you’re still following me and wondering why this article so far makes absolutely no sense then you are catching on to my point.

I’ve always felt that college football always ends like the NFL season begins; with a bunch of hyped up, meaningless games that media spins to try and pique fans interest. I have always stayed out of the argument about who is deserving and who isn’t. Fans are disgusted by the BCS system. They are perplexed as to why there needs to be BCS Conferences and why the smaller conferences have virtually no chance of making it to the big show. I’m not talking about a meaningless Rose Bowl game either. I mean the ultimate prize, the National Championship. Fans argue that the Mountain West is a great conference and that they can’t believe Utah, BYU and TCU are jumping ship. Here is the truth. In fact, let’s compare the MWC with the PAC-10. What does the Pac-10 have on the Mountain West? Yes, I’m being serious. I looked over the last 3 years of bowl games and top 25 results and discovered something; The Mountain West was indeed better than the PAC-10. So PAC-10 fan what do you have to say for yourself? If you include future members of both the PAC-10 and MWC, like Colorado and Utah for the PAC-10, and Fresno St, Hawaii, Boise St and Nevada for the MWC, the MWC has won 14 games compared to the PAC-10’s nine. PAC-10 fans might then fall back on teams in the top 25 at the end of the year. But this also favors the Mountain West; MWC has 11 teams in the top 25 in that time frame while the PAC-10 has 10. The PAC-10 has the luxury of including Utah for both conferences. So take that away and it’s even more one sided. So why should we hate the BCS?

As celebrated as BCS bowl games are they really make no sense and have no meaning. Games are played where coaches can’t coach because they are either fired or moved to a better team. Players are ineligible for talking with agents, bad grades or accepting gifts. Mascots are suspending for humping unsuspecting legs. They play these games in Hawaii, Florida and California. I work hard at my job, but if I had to do it in Las Vegas for a week, I probably wouldn’t be working very hard THAT week. Why am I so excited to see a future Rams victory in the 2014 Vagisil Bowl? Does it matter if we win or lose? I don’t care that the Rams just made the university $250,000 to participate. Pay me to watch it.

The Mountain West and other smaller conferences are losing schools and the effects are going to be huge. You might look at a team like TCU leaving and think that with Boise St arriving, that we got an even trade off. These bigger schools aren’t trying to make their conferences more competitive. It’s all about the Benjamins. Boise State can’t get into a big conference for a reason, and it has to do with market size. This is where the PAC-10 has a huge advantage over the MWC. Boise St is a better team and would make the conference stronger competitively. But they wanted to expand their brand and market to a wider audience. Why bring in Boise St and their 585,207 people when they can bring in Salt Lake’s 1.1 million and Denver’s 2.6 million people? The Big East didn’t see TCU the football program; they saw the Dallas-Ft. Worth area’s 6.8 million population as the attraction. These were potential MWC supporters. Even the additions of Fresno St., (1 million), Hawaii (909,000), Nevada (420,000), and Boise St (585,000) combined can’t make up for the loss of TCU.

Pac-10: USC/UCLA (Los Angeles) = 9.8 million Arizona State (Tempe/Scottsdale/Phoenix) = 4.3 million Arizona (Tucson) - 1 million Oregon/Oregon State = 730,000 Washington (Seattle/Tacoma) = 3.9 million Cal/ Stanford (San Francisco/Oakland) = 1.3 million Washington St. is the only exception, but Pullman is pretty close to Boise, so you see why Boise State isn’t coveted. They have some of that market already

MWC: New Mexico (Albuquerque) = 869,000 Air Force (Colorado Springs) = 626,000 Wyoming (Laramie) = 57,298 UNLV (Las Vegas) =1.9 million, SDSU (San Diego) = 3 million CSU (Ft.Collins/Greeley) = 225,000.

The population deviances between the 2 conferences are huge and the effects of it are going to mean less revenue and shared income for sports programs, scholarships, facilities, and coaches. The TV contract money is going to the conferences that can reach the most people. This will further widen the gap between the BCS and non BCS, like the MWC. This makes the BYU move to go independent perplexing. BYU was arrogant to leave the MWC. They have a huge national following due to their representation of the Mormon faith, but I don’t see them succeeding as an independent with the current money driven system in place, and I feel that it’s going to hurt their program in the long run.

CSU will always be on the outside looking in. The Denver market belongs to CU and there is not a large enough market for a conference to get excited about. So a scenario can happen where CSU watches teams leave the Mountain West, only to realize that they’re one of the only ones left. If I was looking to add teams, the Mountain West is the first place I would go, but I would want to add SDSU and the surrounding 3 million people, or UNLV and the surrounding 1.9 million there. It doesn’t matter that the Aztecs and Rebels historically aren’t very good. So in the future, let’s go to the 2019 Vagisil Bowl, and see my Rams pummel the UL-Monroe Warhawks, in a game between 7th place conference finishers. Will I curse the BCS system that sucked the money from my pockets or watch with the same indifference I did those many moons ago when Donald Duck landed that double axel?

Mizery
Wilmington,NC

SUPER BOWL SUMMARY

The Black Eyed Peas leaving the Super Bowl on Sunday

The Packers are World Champs and another NFL season comes to an end with a great football game. Buts let’s get down to brass tacks. The entertainment. That’s what the Super Bowl is all about. The halftime show, commercials and celebs everywhere. At one point I saw George W. Bush sitting next to Ashton Kutcher, and I thought about what they might be discussing. Football? Possibly. More likely “W” was reciting lines from “Dude, Where’s My Car?” to the WORST ACTOR ON EARTH.

I digress. That girl from Glee sang “America the Beautiful.” Good job. Secondly, Christina Aguilera forgets the words to the National Anthem. It looks like she forgot she’s not skinny anymore because that outfit she was wearing was fighting for its life. Biggest stage in the world; suck town, population, one; Christina Aguilera. I think Tina’s a great singer but once you blow the lines you might as well wrap it up and go slam some beers to get over it. I thought I wouldn’t have to hear that annoying, over embellished, proving to the world that you can stick as many notes as you can in one breath, load of crap, again.

I had heard the “The Black Eyed Peas” were performing the halftime show for months and I had been dreading it for months. Here comes the Peas, looking like they just stepped off of some kind of future space craft. Will.I.Am, Fergie and those two other guys. L to the A to the M to the E. They went through the standard medley of songs, making sure classics such as “Boom, Boom, Pow” where heard the world over. Thanks guys. Then Slash appears out of nowhere to cash a paycheck and ruin “Sweet Child O Mine” with F to the E to the R to the G to the I to the E. I think they used some kind of futuristic brain washing device to influence Slash to play on stage with them. Maybe Slash thought it was the Black Keys and not the Peas. Then again, Velvet Revolver sucked and his Guitar Hero paychecks are probably drying up. Zing!

As far as commercials go, nothing new here. Darth Vader boy was probably one of the only ones that stick out. Pug hitting glass door on owner? Saw that coming. Pop can getting thrown at someone’s head? Not funny anymore. Come on. “Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?” SNL.

Overall, blah.

RECRUITMENT HANG OVER

In know this is a football site, but let me write something real quick about the Colorado State basketball game last night. They’re still Rams so I can write what the hell I want to write. Can any Ram athletics team catch a break? How disappointing was that? Brutal. We had them right where we wanted them. At half time I remember thinking, “Andy’s gonna take over this game and Nigon is going to hit a couple of long bombs to put this away.” Not so much. We would have been comfortable if we could have hit free throws all night. Oh well. We played the number 6 team in the nation pretty tough. The funniest thing to watch was Brian Carlwell of San Diego State dribble a basketball. It was hysterical watching a 6’11”, 300 lbs. have absolutely no coordination. Just a big ogre looking dude standing around with limited basketball skills, getting in the way of people. I wish we had a big ogre to get in the way of people. I digress.

Back to football. We attended the Ram Round-Up last night to catch a glimps at our 2011 recruiting class. I know we’ve been profiling players this past month but Steve was showing some film I’ve never seen before, or was he? I noticed a lot of the recruits committed to CSU had only their junior highlights. Just a fluke? No. That’s because a lot of them had injuries putting them on the sidelines their senior year. I know coming back from knee surgery can make the knee stronger, I’m optimistic, but I really hope our recruits aren’t injury prone. I just feel like sometimes Colorado State is that band geek that the popular guy never wants to date. Only until she comes back to her 10 year reunion smoke’n hot; only then Zack Morris asks her out and she totally turns him down because she remembers those times Zack didn’t notice her while he was dancing with Kelly at the senior prom. Screech is doing the sprain. Anyway, I think CSU gets sloppy seconds sometimes. The good thing about that is a lot of those turn out to be excellent football players because they are determined to make a name for themselves or for their school. Judging by all the film, this class has a lot of speed and size. This should be a great class. Right now, we have great leadership and the coaching staff is dedicated to making this program a winner. I uploaded a couple of photos from the event to our facebook page. I also have some video that I’ll be uploading sometime. I’ll keep you updated.

NATIONAL SIGNING DAY COVERAGE

FINALLY, National Signing Day is here! Ramifications and GoldandGreenNews have teamed up for this event today. We will be bringing you live updates of all the signings. Later tonight, Ramifications will be bringing you updates, photos and video on our Facebook page so if you haven't been to our fan page yet, get out there and 'Like' us. Below the CSU coverage we added some live ESPN national coverage, just in case you care. Ready for an awesome day?

Quick Links

Commitment List	Recruiting Roundtable - Part 1*	Recruiting Roundtable - Part 2*
Twitter	The One(s) That Got Away*	On The Matt: NSD 2011
G&G TV: Dorian Brown*	Rams Audio: Steve Fairchild*	Recruiting Roundtable - Podcast

SIGNED RECRUITS FOR COLORADO STATE
Keenan Adams K/P 5-10 186 Bainbridge, Ga./Bainbridge
Donnell Alexander RB 5-11 215 Blue Springs, Mo./South
Kapri Bibbs RB 5-11 203 Plainfield, Ill./Plainfield North
Dorian Brown RB 6-1 220 Loveland, Colo./Thompson Valley
Sam Carlson OL 6-4 260 Wellington, Colo./Poudre
Trey Cassidy OL 6-3 276 Angleton, Texas/Angleton
Lee Clubb WR 5-10 185 Iowa Park, Texas/Iowa Park
Aaron Davis LB 6-0 192 Los Alamitos, Calif./Los Alamitos
DeAndre Elliott DB 6-1 175 Dallas, Texas/Carter
Nu'uvali Fa'apito LB 6-0 205 La Quinta, Calif./La Quinta
Garrett Grayson QB 6-2 202 Vancouver, Wash./Heritage
Justin Hansen OL/DL 6-5 293 Longmont, Colo./Longmont
Cory James LB 6-0 210 Del Rio, Texas/Del Rio
Blake Jones TE 6-5 235 Tulsa, Okla./Union
Joe Kawulok DL 6-6 220 Louisville, Colo./Monarch
Charles Lovett WR 5-8 170 Tampa, Fla./Hillsborough
Trent Matthews DB 6-3 195 Converse, Texas/Judson
George Maumau FB 5-11 230 Denver, Colo./Valor Christian
Steven Michel LB 6-1 206 Orlando, Fla./Jones
Isiah Norton DL 6-6 295 Dallas, Texas/Kimball
Colton Paulhus DL 6-2 260 Granite Bay, Calif./American River Coll.
Kevin Pierre-Louis DB 6-1 190 Del Rio, Texas/Del Rio
Beau Reilly QB 6-4 175 Valley Center, Calif./Valley Center
Drew Reilly DB 6-3 190 Valley Center, Calif./Valley Center
Davon Riddick RB 6-0 205 Abilene, Texas/Cooper
Conner Smith QB 6-5 220 Richmond, Texas/Travis

RECRUIT PROFILE 2011 - KEENAN ADAMS

5'10"  |  175 lbs.  |  K  |  Bainbridge High School, Georgia

Let's start out by saying that this kid is pretty much a stud and Colorado State is lucky to have him as a commit. He hit a 52 yard bomb to beat a rival high school this past year. He is 89 of 93 in extra point attempts in his career; a 96% conversion rate which is excellent. If I recall this last year, the Rams had a problem at collecting extra points. He is an accurate corner punting master pinning his opponents. His nickname, "The Golden Toe", according to Rohan Gaines, teammate and quarterback of Bainbridge; seems to be validated after watching these highlights. Adams has a great work ethic and is a smart young athlete, enrolling in the school of engineering at Colorado State.



Go Rams!

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