“You've gotta be kidding me. I come here every year, this place never gets that packed.”

“You obviously haven’t been here this year.”

This was the exchange between a Buffs fan back in Boulder for homecoming and the bartender at The Sink, one of the Hill’s classic establishments, a good 5 hours before kickoff of Colorado’s homecoming game. The patron was bitching about having to give up his bar stool to make room for more people, and in an “oh honey, things have changed” attitude, the bartender let him know that he could whine all he wanted, but nobody was going to care. After all, it was Buffs gameday.

However, you can’t really blame this guy for being aghast at The Sink’s new policy. He certainly wasn’t alone in discovering that things seem a little different in Boulder this year. It may have been homecoming, but you’ll have to excuse the recent alums if they seemed a little lost back on their old stomping grounds. While the brick-laden campus looks as stunning as ever, there are some things the recent alums might have trouble recognizing - new buildings surrounding the quad, an elite football facility built on the former tailgating grounds, and oh, that thing on the field young fans, that’s called a football team. A good one. A grind it out, light you up, never stop type of football team that makes the trip to Folsom Field brutal for opponents and entertaining for its fans.

After a decade of trying to climb back up the mountain, it appears that Colorado football is indeed on “The Rise.”

The Hill

It may have been a rough decade for the Buffs, but I don’t care if it’d been a rough century, no coach should ever have trouble attracting elite athletes to CU. The Pac-12 is loaded with beautiful campuses, but any debate of top prize in that contest absolutely must include Boulder. Everywhere you look, there is a gorgeous brick building basking in sunlight, surrounded by trees in full fall colors, with incredible views of the dynamic Flatirons filling out the backdrop. And, if you’re bringing recruits to Boulder on homecoming weekend, when it’s 80 degrees and sunny in the middle of October, and the campus is flooded with sunkissed CU ladies in full summer attire, well, now we’re getting to the brink of an impermissible benefit.

Gameday in Boulder is a tough thing to capture because there are so many different ways to take it in. I started my day up on the Hill at “The Sink.” I remember being told I must go to The Sink back when I was checking out colleges and still remember the handwritten inappropriate jokes gleefully "decorating" the low ceilings, the cramped quarters, the BBQ sauce, the creative wall murals, and the impression the place left on a 17-year old using a fake ID for the first time. I was beyond stoked to walk through the doors and find that the only thing that had changed was that the acne-covered 17-year-old who had used a fake ID on his last visit was now a balding 29-year-old married man.

The Sink was pretty packed 5 and a half hours before kickoff and only getting more crowded as Georgia fell to Vandy, Clemson survived NC State, and Purdue lost to Iowa on the TV for which nobody could find the remote. Nobody seemed to much care about the lost clicker though. Longtime friends were too busy reminiscing on the good ol’ times, while savoring the satisfying present of finally having a meaningful October Saturday. One of the guys I spoke to at the bar mentioned this was the first time he brought his elementary-age kids to Boulder, when I asked him what took him so long, he said “In full honesty, they’re kinda wimps and I didn’t want to deal with their disappointment in watching the Buffs get shellacked.”

But the fun on the Hill wasn’t limited to the Sink. College kids (and those in denial of no longer being college kids) were reveling in the sunny pre-kickoff hours by downing Keystone Lights and rocking out to the astounding amount of music populating the Hill. I walked maybe 4 blocks to some pregame party a patron of the bar invited me too, and for the entire length of that walk, seemingly every third house had some form of live band or a DJ spinning tracks while masses decked out in every variation of black and gold crammed onto whatever inch of frontyard, backyard, or patio was available for soaking in the summer-like day.

Buffwagon Filling Up Fast

While I was walking back across campus, I thought I’d make a quick stop by the bookstore to see if I could grab one of those mini Buffalo hats with horns for my nephew, but when I rolled up, the place resembled SEC country more than Pac-12 territory. Specifically, it was what I imagine an Arkansas Wal-Mart must look like on the morning after Thanksgiving. The place was packed to the brim with fans scavenging through half-empty rack after half-empty rack, and the bookstore employees could only apologetically smirk as customer after customer came up with desperation in their eyes to ask if the bookstore had any Black and Gold jerseys left in a size other than triple-XL. What makes this all the more astounding is that the most popular CU shirt from the past few seasons was more of an ode to the no-holds-barred attitude many Buffs tailgaters bring on gameday rather than anything having to do with the football team's performance - with a highlighted C and U, the shirts read “we blaCk oUt.”

Quick Sidenote:

When it comes to sports, widespread “assumptions” are often exactly that - assumptions - instantly accepted facts lacking any sort of proof. And other times, widespread “assumptions” really aren’t assumptions at all, but facts that are so incredibly well-established upon any check that they revert to being assumptions only because nobody wants to spend the breaths of air it would take to verify their validity. One of these so-called "assumptions" that falls into the latter category as a “cold-hard fact” is that Nike is better than Adidas.

Adidas may consider itself a competitor of Nike, but that’s just laughable. The gap between Nike and Adidas is huge, not like the 2015 Warriors compared to the 2014 Lakers huge, but as in the 2015 Warriors compared to your middle-school B team huge. It is absolutely astounding how much better-looking the gear at Nike schools is. Better looking, higher quality, with way more variety - just significantly better in every possible way. Sorry ASU (I’ve long felt your pain as Adidas overlords have controlled Bruin attire for years and years), but when you go to a game between a Nike school (like Colorado) and an Adidas school (like ASU) it’s impossible to come away not noticing the depth of this discrepancy.

As I was making my way from the bookstore to some tailgates, I accidentally stumbled upon Colorado’s band practice. At least, I think it was practice. Based on the attire of the people playing instruments, there’s an equal chance I stumbled upon an epic game of strip poker between the trombonists and the trumpeters. I have no idea if this is a CU tradition or just a special celebration of the incredible 80-degree October day, but as if straight out of some band camp fantasy, the band members were running through renditions of "Glory Colorado" while leaving much too little to the imagination. (Isn’t college the best? Even the band kids get in on the fun.)

On the other side of the wall from band practice was one of CU’s most ideal tailgate locations - right in the heart of campus, with free entertainment from the scantily-clad band, access to the residence hall restrooms (at least for female tailgaters with a decent smile) and of course, an incredible view of the Flatirons. And do you know what vehicle you want to have for tailgating in this ideal location??? An ambulance. That’s right, an ambulance. After ASU, inexplicably broke our streak, CU came back with a vengeance, with perhaps the most ambulances per tailgater of any destination so far.

This one small strip of tailgating heaven was littered with ambulances, tall tales, and the buzz of finally having a team as entertaining as Ralphie herself. As one ambulance owner, Charlie of CU SWAT (Skip Work and Tailgate), told me, “we have been desparate, DESPARATE to bring back the winning tradition here. We’ve been here for every game and stayed until the end, we’ve paid our dues, it’s time to get back to the top.” After moving his young family out to Boulder in 1980, Charlie was in search of a cheap form of entertainment. Thanks to Chuck Fairbanks (and his 7-26 record as coach), the Buffs were the most affordable show in town. However, even with the Buffs as cellar dwellers of the Big Eight, the majesty of Folsom Field and the fun of tailgating on Colorado’s fall Saturdays, kept Charlie coming back week after week, season after season, including the ride to the national championship, dominance over the weakest division in college football history (still hard to believe they allowed Iowa State and Kansas to be in the same division), a turbulent start to the Pac-12, and all along the Buffs climb back up the mountain.

No matter the week, Charlie still “had this view, this beer, and lots of fun.” “It was during one of those down years, that a guy pulled up a couple spots over from me in a black and gold painted short bus, and I experienced the first symptoms of tailgate envy.” When I asked Charlie why the CU SWAT ambulance was the cure for his tailgate envy, he gave me some long philosophical answer about hours of online research and power generation statistics, before catching my attention again when he said “I flew into Crested Butte, handed them 25 $100 bills, flipped on the ambulance lights, and did 80 the whole way home.”

Another ambulance tailgate organizer had an even better sense of humor when I asked him why he chose an ambulance as his tailgating vehicle of choice:

“The program has been in intensive care for the last decade, what else would be more appropriate?”

Don’t let his good sense of humor fool you though, this particular Buffs tailgate was pretty hardcore. The organizer has missed 3 games since ‘87 - when his mom passed away, when he was in a good friend’s wedding (at least the “good” part applied before his friend’s inconsiderate scheduling), and the birth of his child. Another one of the tailgaters then chimed in to let me know that his wife was 2 weeks late and due any second. As he finished off another Silver Bullet, his friend asked him if he was going to take some Coors Lights with him to the hospital, to which he responded with a very solid point, “I’m going to be ubering over there anyway.” I’m not sure Mrs. Saturday would be as impressed as I was with this guy’s dedication to tailgating.

Pac-12 Pride

We’re now officially midway through the journey through the Pac-12 and it is abundantly clear that the Pac-12’s newest additions are by far the conference’s proudest members. I was not at all surprised by this in Salt Lake City, but Colorado had been on the college football map for a long time before ever joining the Pac-12. The Buffs won a national title in 1991 and were pretty consistently at the top of the Big XII from the late-80s to the mid-2000s. However, not a single Buffs fan I talked to missed those days in the heartland conference. Why not?

“Have you ever been to Ames, Iowa? What about Manhattan, Kansas? Yeah that’s what I thought.”

With all due respect to Ames and the Little Apple, it’s not hard to see where these guys were coming from. It’s not just that LA and Seattle have a little more to offer as a road trip destination, but aside from the multitude of cowboy boots, CU has quite the west coast vibe and according to my definitive, scientific poll, Colorado alumni don’t live in Big XII country, they live in California or Portland or Washington. And its more than just having alumni live in the area; despite the Buffs tough start to life in the Pac-12, CU fans have been showing up in force and filling up Pac-12 away sections with black and gold at each stop along the way.

Surprisingly, the Colorado fans didn’t even seem that disappointed with having to leave some of their great Big XII rivalries behind. They’ll still always get to ragdoll their little brother Colorado State at the start of each season, and while no one’s giving the Pac-12’s manufactured Rumble in the Rockies any credence yet, if Utah and Colorado keep performing like they have through the first half of this season, we could be on pace to write at least one good chapter of that story on the final Saturday of this fall.

If the Buffs were to slip up between now and then? Well, at least they still wouldn’t have to go back to Ames.

Other Quotes from the tailgate lots:

“This is amazing, it’s mid-October, and we’re watching a game that matters to us.” - CU fan on watching Oregon State vs. Utah while tailgating and knowing that a Utah loss could put the Buffs alone in first place.

“Look at you! You’re dressed like you’re running a race in July!” - Boulder speak for “Man, what a nice day.”

“Most fun way to ever atone for your sins.” - Buffs tailgater who tailgates in a church parking lot across the street from Folsom Field. The church parking permit only costs $50 for the year, but you have to make a $450 donation to the church for the right to buy it.

“Things have changed, Jess. I want to actually be in for kickoff today.” - A recent alum who was not going to be convinced by her friends to walk across campus to a party on the Hill with only an hour to gametime.

"Are you going to name him, Sefo?" - Me, asking the aforementioned tailgater about baby names for his soon-to-be-born child. His response:

"No, it's a girl. So were going with... Ralphie."

Stay Tuned for Boulder-Part II with a unique take on Ralphie’s Run, the distinct scents of Folsom Field, and why Gatorade baths in mid-October are never acceptable (except this once!)