CU holds Fan Camp
filed in Opinion on Aug.17, 2003
CU held their second annual “Fan Camp” on Saturday for all season ticket holders. Included in the promotion was the opportunity to tour the Dal Ward Center (including the coaches’ offices, the weightroom, and the trophy room), a preview of the new East concourse (with free Pepsi and hot dogs), and the opportunity to watch a full squad scrimmage. It was a beautiful day in Boulder and I think the overall idea was a success. The only mystifying aspect of the whole thing was the exclusivity. Only season ticket holders were allowed to attend the event and that didn’t include students season ticket holders. I don’t know why the University didn’t open it up to anyone who wanted to come. Neill Woelk covered this better than I can today in the Daily Camera.
As far as the scrimmage was concerned, the defense fairly well dominated the offense all day. Joel Klatt looked decent running the first team offense, throwing one 47-yard TD pass to FB Lawernce Vickers. The RB position looks to be in good shape as both Brandon Ceasar and Isaiah Crawford looked like they are capable of picking up the reigns if need be. I was most impressed with Ceasar when he ran down Jeremy Bloom from behind on punt coverage. As expected, the offensive line looks like it still needs to gel. The running game seemed to stall all afternoon as a combination of less than spectacular O-Line play and fantastic D-Line play.
On the defensive side, it was easy to see why the coaching staff has continued to praise all areas. The D-Line looked fierce and it appeared that there is significant depth at this position. Hopefully, that will translate to a D-Line that can stay fresh all game and keep QBs under pressure. The secondary made a number of great plays and looks to be a solid squad.
On special teams, both the punters, and more importantly, the kickers looked good. It appears that there will be a lot of competition at the place kicker spot allowing for a replacement to step in if someone starts to struggle. On Bloom’s only punt return, he went for 66 yards and looked as impressive as he did last year.
Overall, I’m optimistic about the upcoming season. The biggest worry is the O-Line which is talented, but needs to grow up quick. If they can solidify as a unit, we’ll be in great shape. The team ran a limited playbook on Saturday as to not give anything away for the CSU game. On the surface, it’s encouraging that Bloom had 3 receptions for 38 yards but most, if not all, of those were with the second team offense. I hope Shawn Watson has some plays designed to get Jeremy the ball. The only time we seemed to use him last year was on the end around. That’s all well and good, except that the opposing team knows what’s coming when Bloom comes in the game. We need to use Jeremy all over the field as I’m confident that this will be his last year in a Buffs uniform.
More information about the scrimmage can be found in the Daily Camera, Denver Post, and cubuffs.com.
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August 19th, 2003 on 11:20 pm
Hey so did anyone else see this? http://espn.go.com/ncf/news/2003/0819/1599306.html
turns out ole slick rick has got himself a new gig. High School football head….uh no. offensive coord….uh nope. QB coach. thats right. bit of a demotion. anyways, im getting pumped up to see ralphie give a charge, shes been waitin. marc, lookin forward to see you and group down by whatever advertisment they give up this year.
August 20th, 2003 on 12:29 pm
Speaking of fan camp…
A yearly ranking of the nation’s top “party schools” is finding a Rocky Mountain high.
The University of Colorado, where a six-year effort, by the deans office, to curb binge drinking ended this spring without making a dent, is the nation’s No. 1 party school. According to the latest Princeton Review survey, the typical CU student smokes a lot of marijuana and drinks a lot of booze, but doesn’t study very often. CU did receive 3 out of 4 stars for academics in the survey.
In other party-school criteria, CU ranked third in widespread use of marijuana, fourth in the prevalence of hard liquor consumption and 11th in the prevalence of beer usage. The university ranked first among schools where students study the least.
Clearly the students of the University of Colorado are fully researching the truth of the natural law of the “Buffalo Theory.” After this study I think it may be justified in being called the “Buffalo Law of Survival of the Strongest!”
The other top 10 party schools were the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Indiana University, Bloomington; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va.; University of Texas-Austin; The University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.; DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind.; and Saint Bonaventure University, Olean, N.Y.