Football fever ready to rise again

There are football fans and then there are football fanatics.
Fans like Joel Cantalamessa, who plans to quit his job as a tech
writer and devote all of his time to his Web site, www.
ramnation.com, so he can write about the Colorado State University
Rams he loves.
Or Dave Eaton, who won’t be quitting his job for his Web site,
www.uncbearsport.com, but follows the Bears football team at the
University of Northern Colorado just as religiously.
Or Dick Wiedeman, who has his own mobile home and has driven it to
Las Vegas and Memphis to watch the Rams play in a bowl game.
“They can draw in fans that we can’t touch sometimes,´ said Colin
McDonough, assistant athletic director for UNC. “Like Warren. He’s
had the last couple of fundraisers at Barleycorn’s. Sometimes
word-of-mouth is best.”
By “Warren,” McDonough is referring to Warren Woodson, a devoted fan
who happens to own Barleycorn’s Spirits and Sports, a bar in Greeley.
Woodson didn’t even go to UNC. He went to Southern Missouri in
Springfield, Mo., before the Vietnam War, then went to Northwest
Missouri State in 1971 and graduated with a degree in accounting. So
this isn’t a case of an alum fiercely backing the team of the same
university he attended.
In fact, if you ask Woodson why he likes the Bears so much, it’s hard
for him to put it into words other than to simply say, “They’re a
great team and the coaches and staff are a great bunch of guys.”
When it comes to putting it into words, Cantalamessa, who graduated
from CSU in 1995 with a degree in technical writing, comes the
closest. “Just being a student there, you have that allegiance,” he
said. “I think Sonny Lubick is a big reason. He’s just so respected.
And he brought so much pride to the program and the college and the
city. He runs a clean program.”

All kinds of fans
“They can really do a lot for you,´ said Gary Ozzello, sports
information director at CSU. “We’ve been really successful in the
last few years and these guys will be there all the time. They’ll all
pile into a car and drive to a place like Las Vegas just to see the
team play. Dick’s (Wiedeman) gone to the games for 35 years. When we
went to the Liberty Bowl in 2002 he showed up in his RV. Joel’s in
his late 20s. He and his wife are real die-hards. These fans go all
over the map. They are people who move to town, people who’ve been
here all their life, people who’ve seen the Rams play on TV, family
members. They’re all kinds.”
McDonough suspects that with the development of the Internet, the Web
site phenomenon has gone on for years. Eaton has had his site –
www.uncbearssport.com – for about two years. It has a message board
where fans can post their comments about the team and articles that
Eaton has gleaned from the Greeley Tribune and other news sources. In
fact, that was probably the biggest reason he became a fan. Eaton
spent 27 years living in Aurora and moved to Greeley only four years
ago. “I’ve been a fan since 1971 and I always got mad because the
Bears never got mentioned in the Denver paper. It was always CU,” he
laughed. “You’d turn on the TV and they’d be talking about the great
game that CU played and how great they did at the end and then they’d
say something like, ‘And UNC won, too, last night.’ And that’s all
we’d get,” he laughed again. “It was annoying more than anything.”
Eaton may gather articles together on the Bears, but he searches by
hand, picking over the Web, and only does it during football season.
For sheer determination, he has to take a back seat to Cantalamessa,
who is quitting his job this fall as a technical writer in the Denver
Tech Center to run his site. “I’m familiarizing plans for it right
now,” he said. “I’m hiring a staff of writers. Instead of it being a
hobby, I’m going to turn it into a profession. So I guess I’m lucky,
I get to do what I love.”
Ramnation is going to have a message board but the articles are going
to be as up-to-date as Cantalamessa can make them. Plus, he’s going
to have writers do articles for him on the program and the games.
There is something, well, nice about all this. No matter how badly
you may have played, there is something gratifying to know that
somewhere in the stands, maybe even in his customary seat, there is
someone rooting for you to do something miraculous.
The expression ‘fair-weather fan’ does not apply to these guys. They
almost cheer their way onto the team. All say they’ve only missed a
game or two here and there, usually away games. Home games are
another matter.
“I’m an avid fan,´ said Wiedeman a truck foreman for Kirby Sod in
Fort Collins. “I’ve been a season ticket holder since 1970. I’ve
never missed a home game. In the last three or four years, I’ve
missed a couple of away games.”
Wiedeman can’t really explain his affinity for the CSU Rams. “I’m
just a loyal fan. Didn’t go there. I’m just a farm boy. Lubick is the
best coach we’ve ever had in my life. I know him and the coaching
staff really well.”

Thankful for the memories
They hem and haw and say they they’ve had so much fun in the stadium
that they can’t pick one game that they remember, but if you press
them just a little, they have their favorite game in their hip pocket
and will pull it out if you insist. If you’re a fan of CSU, it’s
fairly easy.
“My best one was when we went down and beat Arizona,” Wiedeman said.
“They were ranked fourth or fifth in the nation and we beat ’em. I
flew down with the team for that. That has to be the best one.”
“Yeah, the ’94 Holiday Bowl,” Cantalamessa agreed. “That whole season
was like a dream. It put CSU on the map. It seemed like everything
was clicking. We went to the Holiday Bowl and lost to Michigan,
21-14. But that was the year that Arizona had that ‘Desert Swarm’
defense. They were on the cover of Sports Illustrated. They were
ranked No. 6 in the country when we played ’em and nobody gave us a
chance to beat ’em at all. They were supposed to win the national
championship.”
If you’re a UNC fan, it’s a little bit tougher.
“For me, it was when we won our first championship in 1996,” Eaton
said. “We played the Carson-Newman Eagles. They were from Tennessee.
We played them in Florence, Ala., and beat them 23-14. I watched it
on ESPN2.”
“I think it was when we played Florida-Atlantic last year and lost,
21-19,” chuckled Woodson. “We missed a couple of extra points but
that was a real hard-fought game. They are coming here for
homecoming,” he laughed again. “Hope they’re ready.”

on Facebook on LinkedIn