The U.S. Open tennis tournament having finished, we have finally entered the season when television on Saturday can be given over completely to college football. Apparently the world has gone "Boulder crazy." The frenzy over the Colorado Buffalos football team, led by Dejon Sanders, is now playing on two rival networks, Fox Sports and ESPN, both of which have sent celebrity teams, including musicians and famous actors, to participate in the festivities. It looks like a perfect fall day in Colorado (fall begins in early September on the Front Range).
The camera shots of the campus and Flatirons are exquisite. The crowd is packed body to body in the broadcast areas. A year ago no one cared about Colorado football. Now it is the center of the sports world.
Moreover all of this is over a game with...Colorado State, which is in Fort Collins. Whoever thought that the CU-CSU game would be the focus of the entire sports media world? The CSU coach has done his part by making a personal slight to the beloved Dejon Sanders.
How could he be so dumb? I think he knows exactly what he is doing. The best thing for CSU would be for CU to regain its position as a national power, and for the CU-CSU game to be a bitter rivalry, even it means giving motivation to CU today.
Watching this, I say to Jessica, "how many tens, hundreds of thousands of people are watching this and saying to themselves 'that's where I want to live.' ?"
"Sorry we're full up here," I reply to my own question, in an official voice.
Reflecting on this, I'm glad I got to "live the Boulder experience" to its deepest and fullest when it wasn't the focus of the national media like this. I have had that experience repeatedly in my life, being lucky enough to experience places before they "blew up with attention"---New York during the 1990s, as well as Austin, Portland, and the places in Colorado where I've lived. In some ways it applies to Phoenix, where we have decided we saw the very tail end of the Phoenix Valley being a "catch-all" destination for Americans from the rest of the country. Now only a few years later, housing is way more expensive and it feels like part of California.
I understand why people, especially young folk, want to go to the places I've mentioned. Once upon a time you could even raise families in Colorado, rather cheaply compared to other places.
The past is a foreign country.
