Friday Beer Post: 2012 Gameday Beer-o-the-week - UCLA Edition

Each week throughout the football season I'm going to suggest a good beer for the ubiquitous pre-game tailgate. Let's be honest, with tailgates it's not always top quality that you're looking for. To steal a phrase from the heinous beer terrorists at Budweiser, you want "drinkability." (or what a real beer connoisseur calls "a session beer") So, be warned, these may not be "the best" beers around. But, in the words of Dave Chappelle as Samuel L. Jackson, "IT'LL GET YOU DRUNK!"

I'm missing yet another game.  This time, however, it's my own damn fault.  My 10-year high school reunion is this weekend, and I've decided to attend it for no particular reason.  That means a trip home to Chicago, and not to the UCLA game.  (For the record, this decision was made long before the season started.)

The untimely trip to Chicago does give a great idea for a tailgate beer.  I grew up in DuPage County, about 25 miles west of the Second City.  Happily, just down the road from my old stomping grounds is a great craft brewery.  Two Brothers Brewing, located in Warrenville, IL, makes a fantastic Red Rye Ale called Cane and Ebel, and I'm naming it as my gameday beer-o-the-week.

I talked about Two Brothers and Cane and Ebel early last year, but I think it's a beer worth re-visiting.  I love this brew.  While not typically a fan of rye ale offerings, I find this style does a great job balancing a combination of spicy/sweet malts with hoppy notes.  The bottle touts this as being "hopped up," but it's not as bitter/resiny as that advertising can often mean; more floral/sweet.  The creamy/sweet finish is especially pleasing.

I'm definitely going to grab some while I'm back home.  It may be a little bit of a stretch for those in Colorado to get some by kickoff Saturday, but if you can, it's well worth the effort.

Happy Friday!  Go Buffs, beat the Bruins!

2012 UCLA Football Preview

The Parade of Buffs is tonight.  If you weren't planning on going, you may want to rethink your decision.  Not only is it free (from parking to entrance to hors d'œuvres), but it sounds like a pretty cool event.  A bevy of Buff luminaries - including Coach McCartney, Coach Embree, Kordell Stewart, Michael Westbrook, Matt Russell, Coach Boyle, Emma Coburn (*swoon*), Cliff Meely, Cliff Branch, Bridget Turner, Alfred Williams, Tera Bjorklund (double *swoon*), Kami Carmann, Darian Hagan, Charles Johnson, Kelly Campbell, Billy Nelson, Emily Talley, Sean Tufts, Lisa VanGoor and Lucie Zikova - will be there along with many of the current athletes.

There's still time to register, and you can do so by clicking here.  It's not every day you get to see so many Buff greats in one room, so it's more than worth your time to head over to the First Bank Center this evening.

--

This is a pivot game.  The team can go one way or the other.  Play with the passion, effort, and will to win that they showed Saturday in Pullman, and Folsom Field will roar once more.  Come out flat, and only the band and a few close friends will see the game to its conclusion as the score gets out of hand.

I want the roar.  It's been far too long since the student section was able to rush the field, after all...

Kickoff from beautiful Folsom Field is set for 4pm MT.  The broadcast is set for Pac-12 Network, which you may, or may not, get.  If you can't get it, or if you just like the radio broadcast, tune your dial to 850 KOA.

Click below for the preview...

Year of the Freshman: End of September Update

A third of the season has already passed us by, and I think it's high time to catch up with the progress of the massive freshman class. 

13 true freshman have seen the field this season, many of them making a large impact. There have been contributions from redshirt freshman (particularly Nelson Spruce), but I'm primarily focused on the true frosh; the ones who have only been in Boulder for two months at this point.  More could still play as the season progresses, and the roster continues to be shuffled due to performance and injury.  For now, however, these are the lucky 13 to have received playing time.  Below the fold, I'll go through each of the kids who have seen the field, emphasizing their statistical impact.

Click below...

Quick Post: Can momentum be maintained?

I need more information.  That was my overall feeling once the euphoric wave from Saturday wore off. The upset pulled in Pullman was a fantastic win no matter how you look at it; from a morale perspective, to performance growth, to simply relieving the mounting pressure.  It's harder to understand, however, what the long term impact will be.

The questions, tinted with optimism, came fast enough.  Is this the turning point?  Is this the watershed moment?  For me, it's a question of whether the real Buffaloes are the team that played extremely well in the second half on Saturday, of if they're closer to the team that played heartless football in Fresno a week ago.  The answer is almost certainly somewhere in the middle, but I'm not yet ready to say exactly where.  As to longer-term contextuality, there are plenty of steps on the road to respectability, and Saturday certainly could be one of them, but the destination is not guaranteed.  This Saturday's matchup with UCLA will go a long way to telling us what kind of team the 2012 Buffs really are, and in what direction they are headed. 

It was just last season that the Buffs manhandled Arizona at home, leading many in the program to loosely "guarantee" an end to the infamous road losing streak the following weekend in Los Angeles.  The result of all that momentum and positive feeling?  A mostly humiliating 45-6 loss to UCLA.  While the Buffs followed up on that stutter step with a cherry-busting win in Utah the subsequent Friday, that UCLA loss shows the danger of leaping to conclusions.

The saying in baseball has always been, "momentum is only as good as tomorrow's starting pitcher."  In football, I'd change that to "next Saturday's opponent."  The Buffs proved that by stealing a win from a fellow Pac-12 cellar dweller just seven days after reaching a nadir.  UCLA will be a different story this weekend.

Washington State, much like Arizona last season, is a horrific football team right now.

• The Cougars are the only Pac-12 team with a worse defense than CU (they give up an extra half yard per contest).
• Their pass defense is particularly atrocious, as it's 3rd worst in the country with 346 yards allowed per game.
• They can't run the football to save their lives.  In addition to only gaining 16 rushing yards in Saturday's second half, they sit next to last in national rush yards per game with less than 60 yards per contest.  Even Texas Tech at their Air Raid worst was rarely that bad.  You'll cough up a lot of leads playing like that...
• Washington St has a modern culture of losing.  While CU has struggled in recent years, the Cougars haven't been to a bowl game since 2003.  Additionally, they've only won four conference games since the start of the 2008 season (CU has nine).

Comparatively, UCLA is a quality opponent, capable of causing trouble in the Pac-12 South, and desperate for a win after stumbling against Oregon State.  If CU can continue the upward trend of growth, despite a big jump in competition, I'll be in a happy place regardless of the final numbers on the scoreboard.

This rebuilding project is bringing new meaning to the word "comprehensive," so BuffNation needs to find joy in the little things.  I was already pretty happy with the overall performance Saturday before the 21-point 4th quarter comeback.  A similar effort, even in a losing cause, will suffice for another week.  The team can't afford any regression now.

They have to keep the ball rolling.

Monday Grab Bag: "Let's come back and sing that song"

What a difference a week makes.  The Buffs returned to Boulder Saturday night winners in their first conference game, leaving them tied atop the Pac-12 South standings.  It took an incredible fourth quarter comeback, but the win eased blood pressures across the state, and obviously lifted a huge weight from the shoulders of the coaching staff.  The Fresno St game isn't entirely forgotten, but it's at least a secondary memory now.

Today in the bag, I'll be looking back on the win, noting improvement across the board, and taking a run around the nation of football.

Click below for the bag...

Friday Beer Post: 2012 Gameday Beer-o-the-week: Washington St. Edition

Each week throughout the football season I'm going to suggest a good beer for the ubiquitous pre-game tailgate. Let's be honest, with tailgates it's not always top quality that you're looking for. To steal a phrase from the heinous beer terrorists at Budweiser, you want "drinkability." (or what a real beer connoisseur calls "a session beer") So, be warned, these may not be "the best" beers around. But, in the words of Dave Chappelle as Samuel L. Jackson, "IT'LL GET YOU DRUNK!"

Washington brewing takes a backseat to regional powerhouses like Oregon, Colorado, and California.  Flagship local craft breweries like Widmer and Redhook have gone the merger/corporate route, leaving much of the state's exported product distinctless, especially when compared to other West Coast offerings.  That tale is similar for Seattle's Pyramid Brewing, who have been absorbed by the group which owns Genesee Brewing (Mike's Hard Lemonade, among others) and Magic Hat. Corporatized as they may be, their collection isn't entirely without note, however.

Founded nearly 30 years ago, and originally known as Hart Brewing, Pyramid Breweries gained quick notoriety for jump-starting the fruit beer craze.  They won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 1994 for brewing a habit-forming unfiltered wheat ale, tweaked with plenty of an often forgotten Southern European fruit.  That beer, Pyramid's Apricot Ale, is my gameday beer-o-the-week.

Honestly, I'd rather have this, or something of its ilk, then a tired wheat like AveryNew Belgium's Sunshine Wheat.  It's a nice, light wheat ale, with strong notes of dried apricots in both the taste and smell.  Spicy, bready malts on the front end, with very little hops in support.  It's not intensely sweet, like some fruit beers can be, but it's definitely not a bitter pale ale.  I doubt they use real fruit any more, more likely extract, and I can't help but wonder what a home-brewed clone made with real fruit would taste like...

The beer is available in just about every liquor store, so you should have no trouble finding some before the game.  It's a nice change-of-pace, something both my palate and the football team could use.


Happy Friday!  Go Buffs, beat the Cougars!

2012 Washington St Football Preview:

This is some bad dream.  It has to be.  There's no way that my beloved Buffs were made to look like a pee-wee team last week.  Oh shit... I'm having a flashback!:

*sigh* It was all real, wasn't it?  Every minute of slap-stick, Keystone Cops-esque bumbling of basic assignments and pursuit.  It looked like what happens when I turn back the slider on NCAA 13 to "Freshmen," and shed some hapless digital defense.  No mercy, with the computer forcing out my starters in the 2nd quarter.  Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds...

There are nine games left on the schedule.  Nine opportunities for the Buffs to decide if they care that they as a collective group have been reduced to some mix of national laughing stock and regional embarrassment.  I'm not even talking about winning, I'm talking about competing at the basest level imaginable.  Gotta walk before you can crawl (wait a second...).

The team got by with poor execution and substandard effort against weak-ass opponents in the first two weeks, even coming close to two wins, which now seems impossible.  All that Fresno St did was expose the danger of taking that attitude into games with physical, motivated opponents.  With conference play now a reality, you can bet opponents will be both physical and motivated from here on out.

May God have mercy on our souls if that statement remains unheeded.

--

Kickoff is set for 2pm MT Saturday.  If you're a masochist, you can watch the action on FX.  850 KOA has the call for those who can't stand to watch the horror, but still want to follow proceedings.

Click below for the preview...