Colorado somehow has a rival that talks more and wins less
A little college football column to close the week from Split Zone Duo.
Pound for pound, has a college football program ever talked more shit about its rival than Colorado State talks these days about Colorado?
No, probably not. CSU has lost this game six times in a row. At least it had only lost five in a row when Jay Norvell said the following:
I sat down with ESPN today. And I don’t care if they hear it in Boulder. I told them, “I took my hat off, and I took my glasses off.” And I said, “When I talk to grown-ups, I take my hat and my glasses off.’ That’s what my mother taught me. They’re not going to like us, no matter what we say or do. It doesn’t matter. So, let’s go up there and play.
It was a good game, and it felt big at a time when it appeared Deion Sanders might be building something serious in Boulder. Colorado State couldn’t hold an 8-point lead at the end of regulation and lost in overtime.
Norvell’s immediate family members also said a few less-than-nice things about Colorado players. It seems like that hatchet has been buried, at least.
The teams play again on Saturday. Here is an incredible quote (video here) from Colorado State quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi. Emphasis mine:
They came out with that attitude and thought it was going to be a cakewalk. They got a rude, rude awakening real quick. I think it goes to show the hype, the media train, all that only gets you so far. At the end of the day, you have to line up 11 guys against our 11 guys, and we'll find out who wants it more. We'll see how far Instagram followers gets them.
You may read that quote and think to yourself, “Hmm. Did this quarterback put on a clinic in that game? Did he put up amazing numbers in defeat, at least?”
He did not. Fowler-Nicolosi had some moments, including three touchdowns, but coughed up three interceptions to Colorado. Three picks to lose his school’s sixth consecutive rivalry game against an opponent that turned out to suck and went 4-8! And he’s talking about Instagram followers!
(Receiver Tory Horton says in the same interview that CSU should’ve “murdered” Colorado last year and will be out for “revenge” in this game. Maybe it’s a little much. But Horton had 16 catches for 133 yards and a touchdown, part of his second 1,000-yard season in a row. He’s done his job.)
Does Colorado’s talk outpace its production? Obviously. Very, very obviously. But somehow the Buffs have found a rival with an even higher shit talk-to-wins ratio. Colorado State has not bowled since 2017. The all-time series is 68-22-2 in CU’s favor. A lot of that has come in the postwar eras, when Colorado has been in a power conference and Colorado State hasn’t. But Colorado rang up pretty good results in this series even in the programs’ early days, when they shared the old Rocky Mountain and later Mountain States Athletic Conference.
Of late, it has been way worse, with CSU not winning since 2014. Ideally, this would be the year that CSU’s talkin’ would translate into victory. Colorado is not back on the schedule until 2029. This would have been a lot of chatter from a program amid a 15-year drought against its in-state rival. Given the four-season pause in the series that’s coming after this game, Saturday is probably Colorado State’s last chance to beat anyone in the Sanders family.
Listen to Split Zone Duo this week
We recorded a free Week 3 preview and two more shows for paid subscribers:
The Week 3 Tasting Menu previews the whole weekend
Overtime: A bonus show on Pitt’s firing of athletic director Heather Lyke and what it tells us about the rapidly shifting job of an AD
Steven Godrey’s Q&A session with our paid subscribers
The three of us also write a lot!
Before we were podcasters, we were writers. This week:
I (Alex Kirshner) wrote for Slate about Michigan and a burgeoning theory of mine: If you lose a coach to the NFL, you’re probably losing him after the transfer portal window closed. And your new coach’s first year might suck. I also previewed a trio of Week 3 games for Opta Analyst. And I wrote about how Formula 1 racing is suddenly good again, a few years after lots of bandwagoners (like me) swooned for it and then got bored.
Richard Johnson reported for CBS Sports on Sherrone Moore’s contractual situation at Michigan amid an NCAA probe.
Steven Godfrey is in the Washington Post, writing about Notre Dame’s sometimes promising but unsuccessful quest to prove Brian Kelly wrong.
One other cool thing from us
That’s the first video project we’ve ever done. It’s a 15-minute adaptation of "Dead Letters: Nebraska,” a narrative history podcast we recorded for subscribers about the Husker dynasties of old. We dropped that video at the end of July. It’s about to cross 100,000 views, and 98 percent of people who have weighed in with the like or dislike button say they like it. We think you will like it too.
We aren’t that active on YouTube, so we won’t overwhelm you if you subscribe. It’s free, and we pledge to make your algorithmic life better.
Essence of this was BFN making the “too small” gesture at Travis Hunter after running out of bounds