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In May 2016, the athletic directors of Colorado and North Dakota State signed an agreement for a football game between their programs to be played on a Saturday some eight-plus years later. Accordingly, CU would pay NDSU $700,000 to come to Folsom Field.
Instead, the Buffalos and Bison will finally meet in a nationally televised prime-time game on Thursday, so as to accommodate ESPN. If college football schedule-making was done via crystal ball, this is probably not the matchup CU would have wanted to open the sophomore season of the Deion Sanders experiment, considering how things fell apart in Year 1. (Oddsmakers have the Buffs as 9.5-point favorites in the game.)
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Much has changed in the time since the opponents first signed on the dotted line—a combined five new head coaches between the schools and a new conference for CU, which left the Pac-12 for the Big 12—though some key things remain the same. The signatories of the game agreement, AD’s Rick George and Matt Larsen, are still employed at CU and NDSU, respectively. North Dakota State continues to be one of the top FCS football programs in the country, with a history of ruining the non-conference home schedules of their bigger, richer hosts. The Bison have won five out of their last six road games against FBS opponents, including a 23-21 stunner against a No. 13-ranked Iowa team in 2016. And this success, in turn, has made the school’s spoiler opportunities increasingly hard to come by.
In a phone interview, Larsen said despite this, CU made no attempt to wiggle its way out of this year’s home opener. “I have a ton of respect for them for that,” said Larsen, who estimates about 7,000 NDSU faithful will make the 900-mile trek from Fargo, N.D. to Boulder, Colo.
Back in 2016, NDSU was already struggling to find willing FBS schools…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/colorado-deion-limelight-trumps-700k-040100027.html
Author : Sportico
Publish date : 2024-08-29 04:01:00
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