The NU/CU "rivalry"

Neither Nebraska's win today nor the fact the game was close for a while is surprising. Nebraska was clearly the physically superior team, and it was only a matter of time. Yet it was also clear that the Colorado players were even higher on emotion than a normal college team. College football is played by kids who are dependent on emotion in a way that wouldn't be acceptible in profesional football or professional anything. After Nebraska's fourth quarter safety, it was clear hat CU's high had collapsed.

The game was a fitting metaphor of the sordid NU/CU fued. In college football, there are geographic rivalries, like Kansas/Missouri or USC/UCLA, and there are competitive rivalries, like Nebraska/Oklahoma or Ohio St./Michigan. Nebraska/Colorado is neither, it is totally artificial. The Huskers are a boogeyman to the Buffaloes; Boulder's answer to Satanists, gays, and Communists in the heartland.

Though CU has a decent football history, it has always dealt with the problem of being in the Denver area. There are actually things to do there, and even the sports fans are more likely to choose the smooth feats of pro athletes over the over-amped follies of college kids. CU football was going through a bad streach when Bill Mc'Cartney, CU's gay-bashing, daughter-pimping former coach turned Promise Keeper, took over the team in the early eighties, leaving the Front Range metroplex even more indifferent to the Buffs than usual.

Mc'Cartney needed to bring attention to his program; national championchips and rivalries. To the pro sports fan, college rivalries are cute, quaint,like grandpa's old farm stories. Just think of last weeks Michigan/Ohio St. game, which reached a nausiating level of hype normally reserved for the ninth day before the Super Bowl. So Mc'Cartney simply decreed that Nebraska was CU's rival. All the lore, tradition, and heartbreak that come with real rivalries could come later.

It worked. Mc'Cartney's designation of Nebraska (Why not Oklahoma? Luck of the draw.) catered to the Denver area'a vanity, which is based on being the only large metropolis for hundreds of miles around; let's beat the hicks at their own game. Get the general public on board, and all that's left is getting the players and frat boys to hate who they're told too. This is a simple matter indeed, given the kinky authority fetish that football players and other knuckleheads are known for. Colorado gained some famous wins over Nebaska, (86,89,90,01,02,04) several conference championchips, and the most mythical of all the mythical national titles in 1990.

But it didn't last. Any system based on hatred of the other is bound to collapse, just ask the GOP. Despite the cute Nu/Cu rivalry, Coloradans first sports loyalty continued to be the Broncos or the Avalanche.

Than there is the culture of CU and the city of Boulder to consider. It was only a matter of time before the phallus worshipping, Christian supremicist Mc'Cartney got sick of the filthy pagans and left to focus on his cult. CU has had some talented coaches since than, but they have had the nasty habit of ignoring the thuggery of their players while showing moral failings of their own. This has made it easier for the godless socialists in the CU administration to spend money on education instead of athletics, driving away the new twenty-first century athlete who expects to be pampered and sexually serviced during his three years in college before surely moving on to diefication in the NFL.

CU went 2-10 this year. There is no reason to think the situation will dramatically improve any time soon. It's no secret that there are people in the administration who would like to do away with the football team once and for all. But still they go through the motions. They still mock Nebaska and hype the rivalry like the dead Ahab still thrusting his blade into the big red whale.

It's as if the new-age NORML types of Boulder still feel some latant sense of duty to tradition. This is the campus where students demand the retention of Ward Churchill, yet axing the football team; and the martial concept of the big rivalry game that comes with it, would be too radical, like wearing one's Che Guavara shirt to the family Christmas dinner.

So the CU students cheer on the football team because they think they have to, drink themselves blind on game day because they think they have to, hate Nebraska because they think they have to.

Hogwash. Come on, CU! You're supposed to be about breaking new ground, destroying boundries, don't puss out on me now. Go ahead and kill the starving buffalo. I can just see all of the screaming idiots of the sports world throwing fits if a major college were to make such a profound insult to manliness. I bet even O'Reilly and Scarborough would express their outrage.

Good, good, good, please let it be done, and free up Thanksgiving weekend for NU/Kansas State.