PREVIEW OF HATE, WEEK THREE: COLLIN HILL AND THE 11 BEARS

Welcome to the Preview of Hate, a wildly popular preview column that captures unseen elements of the upcoming Colorado State athletic contests. This week, we’re previewing Colorado State football’s game against their in-state rivals, the University of Northern Colorado Bears. The week will be broken down into four parts, or Tiers, of things I hate. The more I hate the thing, the higher the tier.

Before we jump into the Tiers of Hate this week, the Rams had a game on Saturday that is worthy of discussion, only because the team has now seen three quarterbacks in 2 games putting them on a record pace of playing 18 QBs in 12 games this season. That’s a little alarming if you ask me.

After Faton Bauta struggled to move the offense consistently with his poor accuracy and overall “not goodness”, Bobo made the move to the true freshman Collin Hill. Hill, who joined the team early last Spring, showed some promise in his limited reps and the Rams closed out UTSA with a 23-14 win.

We never thought we’d see Hill this season. Yes, his name was in the discussion for the starting QB job up until week one against CU. Yes, it was always assumed he was in the race right up until the end. But, if you really thought Collin Hill was going to get the starting job day one over a Mountain West Second Team QB and a senior major conference transfer, you are either a hopeless romantic or a time traveler. You choose. Just know I will out you as a time traveler and expose your magic to the world.

Nevertheless, here we are. A freshman QB, wide receivers who caught a real bad case of Stone Handitis, and an offensive line that struggles to stay consistent.

At least the defense looked good last week!

This week, the Rams welcome the 2-0 in-state rival the UNC Bears from Greeley, just a half hour down the road. I grew up and went to high school in Greeley, so this’ll be great.

Let’s get Tiering.

UNC’s Campus.

College campuses are usually beautiful quads with various array of old and new buildings looping in and around the grass and campus squares. UNC’s campus is stretched across a bunch of roads and overall looks like someone forgot that populations change and the school would get bigger. It has some great buildings and areas, don’t get me wrong. But what in the world happened here:

I know, it’s “technically connected”. But say you’re in class on 8th avenue and your next class is on 11th? Easy three block walk, right? Yeah, good luck with that. Somehow UNC took a college campus and made it some kind of car shrine. When the world decides that cars are no longer good for transportation, they’ll look at the map of UNC and think “was this built so that nobody could go free of automobiles?” It gives off the vibe of an ulterior motive. A “UNC Campus Design (Created by Dodge)” kind of thing. I don’t want to start a conspiracy but if takes you 30 minutes to go between classes, convenience wasn’t a design strategy and you have to start looking deeper.

TIER TWO

Greeley’s overall driving ability.

Good gravy, driving in Greeley is like those documentaries where they show some poor British guy having to drive in Venezuela and just slowly descending into madness at the crazy South American road rules.

There’s just insanity on some of these roads. I’ve driven in Manhattan, Chicago, Denver, you name it. Greeley is still where I encounter the weirdest driving habits and the worst overall ability. It’s a weird city because it’s a hub of rural roads and farm towns. It’s not like Denver or any cities to the south, it’s not even like Fort Collins a suburban college town, no it’s where all the farmers got together and decided this is where they wanted to put all of their stores.

Because of this, everyone drives like they have a farm to save from the banks in 1928 (or something, I’m not a historian). Yet, at the same time, half of the town is very old and drives as though they don’t have to get anywhere for the next 300 years. It’s a confusing balance of getting tailgated when you’re going 50 on one block and then a woman who was born during the Civil War driving nine miles per hour the next block. It’s bonkers.

Tier Three

Greeley’s weird ass museums.

Last week, I talked about The Alamo museum. A weird place where they put a bunch of stuff in glass that should have been in the trash.

But now, let’s talk about an even stranger museum place. Greeley, Colorado.

Not a lot of people know the history of Greeley. It was named after Horace Greeley, a New York Times publisher and early newspaper baron in New York City. Greeley sent a young man named Nathan Meeker to Colorado, so Nathan went. Nathan “founded” Greeley in 1870, purchasing 2000 acres of land and living there for about eight years. In 1878, he was selected to be part of the group that would force the Ute Native Americans to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and become farmers and basically drop their culture to assimilate to the culture of the white man. This didn’t work out, Meeker was killed in 1879 by the Utes. The Meeker Massacre then became an easy way for the US Government to take away the land they previously gave the Utes and force them onto reservations. It was all very problematic. But if you grew up in Greeley like I did, they kind of just brush this under the rug.

There are a few historical landmarks in Greeley that they like to talk about, the most prominent being the Nathan Meeker house. Here are some stories I learned at the Nathan Meeker house on a trip there in 4th grade:

1. Nathan Meeker was viciously murdered by the Utes, they stuck a speak in his head. This was described in great detail to a room of 9-year-olds.
2. A lot of the early residents of Greeley were people trying to escape tuberculosis, a horrible disease that ravaged early America. Most did not make it.
3. Most of the people that founded Greeley were called idiots because when it was first discovered, it was practically impossible to grow anything. Many people died in the winters. It was not good.
4. Basically we learned about how trash it was to live in Greeley in the 1800s. Lots of people died.

History is fun!

Tier Four

Greeley smells extremely bad.

If you live or have ever lived in Colorado you’ve probably heard of Greeley. But it’s never for good reasons. For a very long time, Greeley was represented by one of the most corrupt politicians in the modern era, this was something people talked about.

But, the biggest thing Greeley is known for, is the smell. Greeley is home to one of the largest meat packing plants in the western US. It’s success and prominence led to the rise of the Monfort family, they now own the Rockies (they aren’t very good at it).

This meat packing plant has a lot of cows, cows smell bad, the cow smell wafts through the town streets often. Greeley smells bad.

When you live there, you think “oh wow this town smells sometimes.” But then someone who doesn’t live in Greeley comes by and reminds you that no one has ever smelled a worse smell in their own air than the smell that is in Greeley half of the time.

Greeley’s smell is so bad, people MAKE UP REASONS about why it is bad. Literally. There are dozens of rumors, some are extremely gross. People honestly can’t fathom a legitimate reason that the town smells so they create ridiculous ones in their head.

If you keep hundreds of cows near a town, that town will smell horrible sometimes. You would think this is sound logic that everyone agreed upon a long time ago. Apparently, Greeley was not on that email chain and missed the conference call on that one. It’s a giant poop house.

★ ★ ★

Well, that’s Greeley. Even though UNC’s offense has come out firing to start this season (coming off back to back 50+ point weeks), I would be shocked and clutching my sadness pillow if the Bears pulled off the upset this week. Collin Hill will get his time to build confidence and hopefully doesn’t have a short leash. Unlike Bauta, I think it’s fair to be patient with Hill.

See you next week, Minneapolis is getting burnt.