There is no 79 on the roster which makes sense because what kind of weirdo would want to wear 79?

Today I’m playing “AD for a day” where I pretend what changes I’d make if I were Colorado State’s athletic director. I split my ideas into three categories: Day One Changes, Might Take Some Work, and Not Very Likely.

So step aside Joe Parker, let’s get to work.

Day One Changes:

Move the marching band back to the 50-yard line

The marching band was an undeniable part of the game day experience back in the days of Hughes. Now that they’re in their special little corner of the new stadium, it’s easy to forget they’re even there. It’s time to move them back into the student section at the 50-yard line.

Moving the marching band back to the 50 has a couple other benefits:

• The students love to cram together, leaving a ton of empty spaces in the student section that look really bad on TV. With the band taking up a ton of space, the student section will look more full and it might actually force some students to fill in the south endzone a little bit.
• You could put a big tarp over the old band section and make a couple bucks by letting some bank put their logo on it.
• It can’t be fun for the opposing team to have a fucking marching band right behind them.

---

Quit being a bunch of cheapskates and finish the stadium wrap

East stands: a cool looking green stadium wrap with Rams and Under Armour logos. North and South endzones: cool looking video boards, especially when the Rams score a touchdown and an ice cold Old Aggie pops up on the screen. West stands?

Ugly-ass concrete! We wanted an ode to Hughes Stadium in our new digs, I guess? Maybe we should add some cracks and water stains to complete the Hughes motif. As Colorado State Athletic Director, I promise you that I will complete the stadium wrap and cover up those concrete monstrosities. (I’m not joking. This drives me insane.)

Might Take Some Work:

Open every season with the Border War

Opening the season with Rocky Mountain Showdown is gone and never coming back. Good riddance, I say! Let’s take this opportunity to actually celebrate our school and our traditions and highlight the rivalry game that’s actually cool: the Border War.

If we want, the Border War has the opportunity to be the far superior rivalry because both schools openly hate each other and embrace it. There’s none of the “we’re not your actual rivals” garbage that makes the run-up to the RMS such a buzzkill.

It’s time to schedule the Border War for Week 1 of every season and spend all summer letting our hatred boil over for those mouth breathers up north. It’s time to Make The Border War Great Again.

But I have this idea in the “Might Take Some Work” section for a reason: schedule-making is a pain in the ass.

I have a solution for the short term though. Both school’s schedules are full for 2021 and 2022, but we play at Hawaii in 2021 and Wyoming is at Hawaii in 2022. So we’re moving the Border War to Week 0 (and getting an extra bye week in the process). Week 1 Border War is probably logistically impossible in 2023 and 2024, but we can do the Week 0 thing again in 2025 and 2026 and then hopefully after that both schools’ schedules will be flexible enough to just schedule the game for Week 1 going forward into eternity (or until our Big 12 invite).

Other benefit: Playing this game before the weather turns awful and while the students are still on-campus. There’s nothing dumber than playing your biggest rival on a 10-degree day on an empty campus.

Other other benefit: this opens up a week later in the season, maybe the Rams can schedule a pay game at an SEC school in October or November when SEC schools typically look to schedule a non-conference opponent. The Pokes can use their flexibility to continue their traitorous ways and schedule a November series with BYU.

---

Stop wearing “gold” pants until Under Armour gets their shit together

There was a time when the Knights of the Green and Gold were a real thing and not just the lyrics to a fight song. Our heroes of the gridiron used to look like this:

Now they look like this:

We’re wearing khakis! What the hell happened?

Should we change the fight song to more accurately reflect the khaki lifestyle?

Knights of the green and khaki
Fi-le your taxessss….
Leeeeave the office ear-ly and pick
Up. The. Kids. Go vans!

As your AD, I promise that I will march right down to Under Armour HQ and demand that they supply us some shiny gold pants as God intended or our partnership is OVER!

In the meantime, the khaki pants are eighty-sixed. We hardly wear them much anyway, not a big deal.

So get on it Under Armour! Gather your top scientists and have them fix our gold pants!

Not Very Likely:

Find a resolution to the Fum’s Song debacle

The coolest thing CSU ever did was play Fum’s Song at the end of the 3rd quarter of home football games, and the lamest thing they ever did was take it away.

Their explanation was that the song was only meant for the locker room and the lyrics weren’t appropriate in a stadium setting. Basically, CSU went with the “locker room talk” excuse before the “locker room talk” excuse was even a thing.

I’ll concede their point. You can’t really call people “sissy boys” any more and calling an entire college “drunkards” is hilarious but probably not the best idea.

There’s also the problem that the melody to Fum’s Song is a trainwreck. You ever try singing along to the whole thing? I think it’s supposed to sound like “Home on the Range” but kinda goes off the rails? There’s a reason that groups have failed to revive Fum’s Song on their own: the melody sucks.

So I have a compromise: Fum’s Song for the locker room, Sonny’s Song for the stadium. Sonny’s Song could be a nicer version with updated rivals, more “PC” lyrics, and an easier melody to sing along to. If you can get Sonny Lubick to sign off on this (and have a video on the jumbotron of him singing it), then it might work.

Writing Sonny’s Song will be difficult, but we have a School of Music and that one guy from the CSU commercials is in the Flobots or something? They can figure it out.

---

Build a Volleyball-only arena

It’s time to go all-in on the one thing we’re good at: volleyball. Right now we’re a NCAA Tournament-level program, we need to become a Final Four-level program. We already have the coaching in place, so let’s ramp up the facilities.

Just imagine if the Rams played their games in a volleyball-only arena like this:

I’m proposing a 3000 to 4500 seat arena with theater lighting like the Staples Center or The Pit, a killer sound system with frickin’ lasers, and let’s make this thing look like a god damn rock concert!

The CSU master plan calls for a parking garage in the Moby parking lot:

Let’s build that parking garage and the put the arena right on top of it. People do this all the time, like San Diego State’s “Sports Deck”:

How do we pay for this? Not sure. Maybe the folks at Otter Box can make another massive donation to CSU and we’ll call the new venue The Otter Box. For the remainder of the funding, I’m just going to sell a bunch of bonds and let future CSU presidents and Athletic Directors worry about paying them back. Remember, I’m only AD for a day, so not my problem!

---

So there you go, that’s what I’d do if I was AD for a day. I’ll be back tomorrow with another stupid gimmick because there’s no number #78 on the roster.