Buffs vs. Rams: Why not play two in 2020?

Colorado State football coach Steve Addazio is a dude, and dudes aren’t scared of no stinkin’ coronavirus. Addazio is worried about beating the CU Buffs in the season-opener Sept. 5, not becoming the next victim of a pandemic that has killed more than 85,000 Americans.

I asked Addazio, a husband and father who celebrates his 61st birthday on June 1, if he felt any heightened sense of danger from COVID-19?

“Zero!” Addazio replied with a second of hesitation.

“I’m not irresponsible, but I’m not concerned.”

Coach Daz is a dude who wants to believe with all his heart there will be college football in 2020. But if you want to hear COVID-19 laugh, tell it your dreams.

“College football needs to be played … if it’s safe,” Addazio said Thursday.

I confess to being a dude like Daz. As a Midwest kid who grew up during the 1960s, dazzled by the gleam of Notre

Dame’s golden dome, college football is my first sports love. So it’s my heartfelt wish the season can kick off with the Rams and Buffs playing Labor Day weekend on CSU’s campus.

“Following the right protocols, we need to get our lives back going again,” Addazio said.

But logic tells me there’s a better chance Colorado State wins the national championship against Alabama in 2020 than this calendar year ends without coronavirus drastically altering, reducing or shutting down the regular season. If we can’t safely put students in CSU classrooms, it would be the height of hypocrisy to put players on the field to justify Addazio’s $1.5 million salary.

You want college football

this year? Well, you better get way more creative than some cockamamie idea of fans sitting six feet apart in the stadium. And I’m here to help, with one idea for CU athletic director Rick George and CSU counterpart Joe Parker to chew on during these strange, uncertain times.

No game on the 2020 schedule can be written in ink, because there’s so little inkling about what havoc the pandemic might wreak next, so little nationwide coordination of the testing and tracing we need, so little consensus from the SEC to the Pac-12 about the difference between what’s safe and irresponsible to salvage a billion-dollar enterprise.

It is little wonder Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson told Sports Illustrated: “I feel like I’m at Grand Central Station, and there are 10 trains leaving in different directions, and we don’t know which one to get on.”

Daz might be the optimistic dude we need right now, as loyal alums and hurting sports bars alike yearn for a return of normalcy on the sports calendar. Or maybe Addazio is a dunderhead who chooses to ignore it might well cost $1,000 to test each CSU football player, before the Rams can get back to blocking, tackling and breaking every rule of social distancing.

So which is it? Is Addazio a football braveheart or pigskin knucklehead?

The truth? Addazio is probably a little of both, because COVID-19 can afflict even the healthiest among us with conflicting, contradictory emotions. I cannot relate to the moral certitude of those loudmouths who scream either “Re-open now!” or “Stay home!” Yes, I’m sick and tired of being held hostage by an invisible disease. But I also hide guilt behind my mask at any urge to give friends or family a hug.

With nothing more than crude estimates about what the death toll might be on July 1, who knows when (or if ) it will be safe for the Rams and Buffs to open training camp? But movers and shakers in college athletics have begun to believe that just as governors in Louisiana and Oregon will re-open for business at different rates, the LSU Tigers and Oregon State Beavers might be ready (or not) to start playing football at different times.

“We’re not going to not have a football season, because a couple teams in a state can’t play. We’re going to have to move forward and accommodate (for) that in a different way,” said Addazio. He’s itching to hit the field, even if three Mountain West football teams located in California are forced to stay sidelined, due to more stringent health restrictions in their home state.

So here’s one modest football proposal for these crazy coronavirus times:

Let’s assume, for purposes of discussion, it’s safe for the Rams and Buffs to play Sept. 5 in a Canvas Stadium that’s empty except for players, coaches, officials and television cameras.

But the very next weekend, Fresno State is scheduled to visit the Buffs, while CSU is supposed to take a road trip to Oregon State. In the name of health, safety or fan interest, those games make very little sense in the age of coronavirus.

How about the Rams instead hop on a bus the morning of Sept. 12 and travel to Boulder to play CU in a rematch at Folsom Field?

Yeah, I know. The Buffs and Rams don’t like each other. But as proud sons and daughters of this fair state, are we together in this fight against coronavirus? Or not?

Rams vs. Buffs. Buffs vs. Rams. What I’m suggesting is a home-and-home football series. On back-to-back weekends.

Strange times require out-ofthe-box thinking.

Hey, CU and CSU: In 2020, let’s play two.