The most important game on CU’S schedule is the Sept. 7 showdown with Nebraska.
BOULDER» If Rick George has anything to say about it, the CU Buffs won’t be kicking off at 10 a.m. this fall.
“I wouldn’t anticipate that you’ll see a home football game at 10 a.m. (this season),” George, CU’S athletic director, told reporters at the Buffs’ annual football media day Saturday at the Dal Ward Athletic Center. “I can almost guarantee that.”
Early kickoffs for the Pac-12 — 9 a.m. on the West Coast, 10 a.m. here — became one of the hottest topics to come out of Pac12 Media Day in Hollywood late last month once the idea was floated by Commissioner Larry Scott, presumably for games carried nationally by Fox Sports.
George said he wasn’t opposed to the idea in the future, but didn’t expect his program to immediately join the Pac-12’s latest attempt to grab Eastern and Central time zone eyeballs.
“I know Coach Tucker and I have talked about it a few times since (the league) talked about that,” George said.
No CSU? When asked about the Nebraska Cornhuskers’ first visit to Folsom Field in a decade on Sept. 7, George had the quip of the afternoon.
“Other than bringing Visine,” the Buffs AD joked, “we’ve done everything we can at this point.”
While he would like to play the Cornhuskers more frequently — another home-and-home series with Nebraska is slated for 2023 and ’24 — George was less bullish on the future CU-CSU game, noting that he doesn’t “necessarily think we need to play it every year.”
George does remain open to more games with Air Force, which is visiting Boulder this fall for the first time since 1973, and said CU will “continue to look for schools to play” along the Front Range.
It wasn’t the Flatirons.
Or Boulder. Former SMU safety Mikial Onu, a graduate transfer who’s expected to contribute immediately to the Buffs secondary, said he elected to play his final collegiate season at CU for two reasons.
One, Mel Tucker. And two?
“I want to win,” said Onu, who recorded 59 tackles and three pass break-ups for the Mustangs in 2018. “For me, I felt CU had the best chance to win. Coach Tucker assured me (that) we’re not starting from scratch.”
Montez on El Paso shooting. For Steven Montez, the news out of El Paso Saturday didn’t just hit close to home. It hit close to his heart.
“(I’m) sending thoughts and prayers to the people in El Paso,” the Buffs quarterback and El Paso, Texas, native said. “It’s a very scary time to live in.”
A shooting at a Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso on Saturday morning accounted for multiple fatalities. Montez, who prepped at Del Valle High School in El Paso, was tabbed as the El Paso area’s most valuable player and the city’s player of the year after a senior season that saw him throw for 2,967 yards and run for another 1,058.
New sports at CU? If there’s a mystery endowment coming to CU athletics for the purposes of adding sports, George said that’s news to him.
“It’s just rumors,” the Buffs administrator said. “I think, for us, I wouldn’t anticipate adding any sports at CU in the next three-to-five years.”