The View From 5430'

 

This is a re-post from the fall of 2011, I watched this game in Dallas with extended family who also happen to be Buffs. With the season mere days away, I wanted to re-visit what was one of the Buffaloes' best wins during "The Lost Years"

 

The End of the Streak

4 years is an exceptionally long period of time.

For some perspective, that’s roughly the length of 20 (!) Kardashian marriages.

The University of Colorado football team went precisely 1,490 days between out-of-state victories. 24 road games, three head coaches, and countless miles came between Friday’s 17-14 triumph over freshly-minted rival Utah at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City and October 27, 2007’s 31-26 victory over Texas Tech in dusty Lubbock, Texas.

That year I was a freshman living in Libby Hall, with a bit more hair, who foolishly believed in the enormous fallacy that was the Dan Hawkins Experience. During my sophomore year I witnessed two of the 24 road losses live and in person. One was a pre-ordained failure in Jacksonville, Florida against the Florida State Seminoles. The other was the heartbreaker that came at the hands, and feet, of the Nebraska Cornhuskers in America’s most scenic concrete methamphetamine dispensary. (Had to, I’m not sorry.)

It takes extraordinary circumstances for a streak like this to grow and the Golden Buffaloes found every possible way to nurture it. Colorado often found itself simply outmatched and outmanned in many of these games. But in contests where they stood a reasonable chance of competing, it was always “the little things” (read: horrendous penalties, poor special teams play, key injuries, missed scoring opportunities) that would begin snowballing at the beginning of each game and before you knew it a full-fledged avalanche was burying any slim chance remaining to the Buffs. They say you make your own luck and CU was conjuring every bad beat imaginable.

All of the familiar demons were in attendance on Friday, and not even the Church of Latter Day Saints could keep them at bay.The Buffs came out firing, scored first, and caught Utah flat-footed. Then, with a chance to begin to really put the pedal down late in the 1^st quarter Toney Clemons dove for the pylon and, in a twist that could only happen to CU, lost the ball which then proceeded to bounce through the end zone for a touchback. Following that, however, the Buffs defense remained stout and took a 10-0 lead into halftime.

After the break, the road demons reared their ugly heads again. CU’s defense started receiving gashing plays from Utah’s offense. The requisite quota of bad penalties at crucial moments was met with numerous false starts and holding calls. Throw in a bad turnover, a no-call on an obvious facemask, and a poor penalty on Parker Orms’ vicious but clean hit and you could faintly hear that same old song and dance drifting over the waters of the Great Salt Lake. Clinging to a 17-14 lead in the dying minutes, CU’s injury-ravaged and much maligned defense finally stood up to The Streak. They held Utah in field goal range and let fate take care of the rest.

To conquer something that becomes so enormous that it takes on a life of its own, a few things need to happen. You need to stare that thing straight in the face, accept it for what it is, and then claw past it by any means necessary. Most importantly, it takes some extraordinary circumstances to break your way. This time, it was the opposing kicker who was missing chip-shot field goals.

Three things took place at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains on Friday. The Colorado Buffaloes ended the darkest streak in school history. The Colorado Buffaloes, and Parker Orms’ resounding hit, began an intermountain rivalry. And the Colorado Buffaloes played with the heart, grit, and determination that used to define University of Colorado football. Never give in.