Run To Glory

Were you Northwestern coaches watching? Do you think Chris Brown may have had a point, after all? You remember Brown. He transferred out of your program early in the 1999 season, after you insisted on switching him from running back to wide receiver. "Didn't like the position," says Brown. "It wasn't me."

Last Friday, in the most stunning upset of the college football season, the guy who had been told to run pass routes instead looked a lot like a young Eric Dickerson. The 6'3", 225-pound Brown rushed for six touchdowns in Colorado's 62-36 pasting of second-ranked Nebraska. Brown, a sophomore, started the game as one of the Buffaloes' backup tailbacks and finished with 198 yards on 24 carries. "He's a great kid, very strong, with great leg drive," says Colorado coach Gary Barnett. "We were playing Purify"—felicitously named tailback Bobby Purify also pureed Nebraska's defense, for 154 yards—"but then Chris caught fire."

Imagine the damage he might have done as a receiver.

Forget football's insistence on dividing games into quarters. Boulder's Folsom Field was the stage for a three-act play on Thanksgiving Friday. Act I: Colorado bolts to a 35-3 lead in the first 18 minutes against BCS rankings leader Nebraska. Act II: The Cornhuskers rally behind Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback Eric Crouch, pulling to within 42-30. Act III: Brown breaks Nebraska's back with his fourth, fifth and sixth touchdown runs. In deflating the Cornhuskers' national title hopes, the Buffaloes (9-2) won the Big 12 North and advanced to the conference championship game in Irving, Texas, on Saturday. There Colorado will face sizzling Texas (10-1), which dominated the Buffaloes 41-7 on Oct. 20 in Austin.

However, after Colorado blew through Nebraska, the logical question was, How did these Buffaloes lose to anyone? "Basically, we've beaten ourselves," says senior quarterback Bobby Pesavento. He tossed off that response before Oklahoma State's 16-13 upset of Oklahoma last Saturday made Texas the South division winner and Colorado's conference tide game opponent. Had Pesavento known he'd be seeing the Longhorns again, he might have given them more credit for their 34-point win over the Buffaloes. The fact remains that Colorado had four turnovers in its season-opening 24-22 loss to Fresno State and four more against Texas.

Last Friday it was the Cornhuskers who had four giveaways, including a back-breaking fumble at the Buffaloes' one-yard line in the third quarter, while Colorado had none. The 62 points the Buffaloes scored were the most ever hung on Nebraska. The proud Blackshirts defense came into the game ranked sixth in the nation in total defense, having yielded 93 rushing yards per game. Colorado had 114 on its first seven carries, 382 by the end of the game. It was the sort of onslaught—582 total yards, 8.2 yards per play—we've come to expect from, well, the Huskers. "They haven't really had anyone line up and try to run at them," said Barnett before the game. "Everybody has tried to finesse them. We're not a finesse team."

The seeds of this rout were sown a year ago at Lincoln's Memorial Stadium. Having just completed a 3-8 season (notable for Barnett's threat to strip the Buffalo decals from his players' helmets after Colorado had started 0-4), the players came together in the visitors' dressing room after losing 34-32 on a last-second, 29-yard field goal. Recalls strongside tackle Victor Rogers, "We'd lost to Nebraska the year before on a field goal in overtime. To lose again on the last play—we thought we were cursed. We vowed in that locker room that we'd never lose to Nebraska again."

Eleven of this year's 27 Buffaloes seniors were recruits of Rick Neuheisel, who left Boulder for Washington after the 1998 season. Barnett, who came to Colorado from Northwestern, didn't find a smash-mouth team awaiting him. " Colorado hadn't been effective at running the ball since '96," he says. "It didn't have the mentality or the backs. We had to recruit the backs and instill the mentality."

Consider it instilled. Visitors to the Colorado football offices around 8:30 last Saturday morning could hear offensive coordinator Shawn Watson shouting, "My God! Wow!" from behind his office door. While reviewing video of Brown's second touchdown, Watson had seen guard Andre Gurode drive a Huskers defender clear through the end zone and pin him against the wall beneath the seats. "Talk about finishing blocks," said Watson a few minutes later. "Andre is a lethal weapon—the best guard I've been around in 20 years of coaching."

The 6'4", 320-pound Gurode is the top athlete among an exceptionally athletic group of hogs. On the weak side of the formation is the Felix-and-Oscar guard-tackle combination of sophomores Marwan Hage and Justin Bates. The 6'4", 295-pound Bates is technically precise. While Hage, who stands 6'3" and weighs 295 pounds, may be a bit more slovenly in his technique, he makes up for it in intensity. "Marwan's a brawler," says Watson, "a guy who's coming at you 100 miles per hour, every snap." At center is the cerebral Wayne Lucier, a 6'4", 300-pound junior and one of two former Northwestern players who followed Barnett to Boulder. Watson raves about the consistency and intellect of Lucier, who makes the line calls. Eclipsing the sun outside Gurode, who is expected to be one of the first guards selected in next April's NFL draft, is Rogers, a fast, agile, 6'7", 315-pound senior tackle who's excelling in his first injury-free season.