Colorado Mines Strikes a Vein

The football rivalry between Colorado College and Colorado School of Mines is somewhat subdued these days, which is to say that students no longer dismantle their rivals’ cars and hang the parts from trees like Christmas ornaments.

Goalposts no longer explode spontaneously, and hapless CC students, caught trying to rearrange the stone M on the Mines campus in Golden no longer get that same initial burned into their foreheads with nitric acid.

That the rivalry, the oldest such west of the Mississippi, is subdued, is probably a good thing, since the extracurricular activities did not merely overshadow the football but threatened life and architecture as well. Here’s a story that was being told as the teams prepared for their 83rd game today:

It seems that in the 1920s, after a loss to CC, some Mines students went to the Colorado College campus in Colorado Springs and wrapped explosives around one of the Doric columns of a campus building. Demolition is something of a specialty for the Orediggers, which tended to put the aspiring doctors and lawyers from CC at a considerable disadvantage in the pregame pranks. Anyway, they lit the fuse, blowing away a sizable chunk of column.

Colorado College demanded an investigation. And it got one. Unfortunately for justice, the state engineer appointed to look into it was a Mines graduate. After an examination, he reported it couldn’t possibly have been done by Mines students because it was no more than C work. Case closed.

Come on down, but bring your lunch: Australians, who keep promising to “slip another shrimp on the barbie” for us, are surprised that it will take something more substantial than that to satisfy the appetites of U.S. football players when they’re Down Under. Organizers of the first Australia Bowl, to be played at Melbourne Dec. 7, were in fact stunned to learn that their meal allowances for the football players from Wyoming and Texas El Paso would be insufficient by half.

The promoters had arranged to pay about $4.20 a day for each player’s breakfast. But then the college officials told hotels there what the players would want to eat, and the breakfast allowance was more than doubled, to $9.80.

“We just didn’t believe that people could eat as much as these footballers apparently can,” a bowl official said.

He needs a wrist band, too: Coach Don Nelson of the Milwaukee Bucks says the National Basketball Assn. ban on coaches wearing athletic shoes with logos during games not only threatens his sense of right and wrong but his safety as well.

“It’s turned into a matter of principle,” Nelson said. “I’ve felt for a long time that basketball coaches should wear basketball shoes while coaching. It’s totally ridiculous not to wear basketball shoes while you’re on the basketball court.”

He noted that players and referees are allowed to wear shoes with logos or brand names on them. But the league rule says that coaches cannot wear footwear or any other apparel that has a brand name or emblem clearly visible.

He said safety was another reason for wearing athletic shoes, which grip better in moist areas that sometimes occur on the floor.

Also, Nelson has a contract with a shoe manufacturer.

Becker backlash bogus: A post office employee who started an “Anti-Boris Becker Club” in Frankfurt, West Germany, confessed that it was all a joke after dozens of people asked to join.

Since Becker won the Wimbledon tennis title in July, West Germany has been gripped by “Becker Fever,” so three weeks ago, Juergen Pfaffe placed a newspaper advertisement for his “club.” He promised callers “Who the devil is Boris Becker?” stickers, videotapes of the teen-age star’s worst shots and negotiations with television companies to ban Becker from the small screen.

Pfaffe, later admitting that it was all a joke, said 40% of his callers were sick and tired of Becker’s saturation media coverage. The other 60% castigated Pfaffe for criticizing their idol.

Quotebook

New York Rangers’ public relations intern Jon Kramer, who is 5 feet 2 inches, on his conversation with gymnast Mary Lou Retton, 4-9: “It was just small talk.”