Colorado AD: In 'best interests' of CU to not renew Colorado State series
Colorado athletic director Rick George isn't a fan of the football series contract between his school and Colorado State.
George told the Denver Post that he would end the agreement between the two schools to play every season. The 2014 game was held at Sports Authority Field in Denver and was won by Colorado State.
"After the current contract, playing the game in Denver is dead," George said. "And I'm not sure where our series with CSU goes after that either. Today, we would not extend our agreement (for CU to play CSU in football) past 2020."
The next five games are scheduled for Denver. The final game in the contract – yes, six games away – is set for at Colorado State.
George is taking a stance familiar for other big schools. Because the Pac-12 plays nine conference games, there are three non-conference games available for Colorado. Depending on the rotation of the schedule, Colorado has four conference games a year at home every other year. George wants at least six home games for Colorado every year.
"My job is to do what's best for CU, the athletic department, our teams, our student-athletes," George said. "I think our best interest is to move games under the contract to campus sites and then, after 2020, I'm not sure (the series) is in our best interest, and that's why at this point I wouldn't extend it."
And while we're in an environment where it feels we're soon going to see announcements for games scheduled in the year 2030, six seasons is still a long time away. We can all attest to how much can change in a similar timeframe.
Heck, there's no guarantee George will be at Colorado or the Pac-12 will be in its current form in 2020. What if Colorado and Colorado State are both part of a western megaconference then? Given what we've seen in the past five years, are you willing to rule it out? And yes, the cynics in us also wonder if this is being talked about if Colorado was the team that's 18-9 over the past two seasons instead of the one that's 6-18.
We get George's sentiments. According to the Post, the school is announcing a plan allowing those with CU season tickets to decline purchasing a CSU game ticket in favor for credit towards another Colorado game. An athletic director's job is to make money for his school. However, do we really need to be discussing the end of a rivalry game when there are more than a handful of them still to go?
For more Colorado news, visit BuffStampede.com.
For more Colorado State news, visit GreenandGoldNews.com.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
