Justin Adams came to Artificial Turf from the natural grass surface at Folsom Field where he toiled as a tight end for the Colorado Buffaloes. Justin, who also worked at Fox Sports Rocky Mountain, wore uniform number 81, hence the title of this webpage. Justin will share his opinions and thoughts on sports, and whatever else is on his mind, right here...on page # 81.
< Justin's Pal Ralphie.
2009 Colorado Buffaloes Schedule/Results
September 6 vs Colorado State at Invesco Field (L 23-17...0-1)
September 11 at Toledo (L 54-38...0-2)
September 19 vs Wyoming (W 24-0...1-2)
October 1 at West Virginia (L 35-24...1-3)
October 10 at Texas (L 38-14...1-4)
October 17 vs Kansas (W 34-30...2-4)
October 24 at Kansas State (L 20-6...2-5)
October 31 vs Missouri 1:30 p.m.
November 7 vs Texas A&M TBA
November 14 at Iowa State TBA
November 19 at Oklahoma State 5:30 p.m.
November 27 vs Nebraska 1:30 p.m.
TWENTY YEARS LATER
Sal Aunese still means the world to CU....By Justin Adams 10-30-09
It was a hot and humid September afternoon in 1988. The #19 ranked Iowa Hawkeyes had won their previous six home openers at Kinnick Stadium and they were poised to make it seven. The visiting Colorado Buffaloes were down 21-17 with 5:36 left in the game. Unranked. In front of 67,000 screaming Hawkeyes fans. The young Buffs looked toward their leader, a quarterback who needed drive the offense 85 yards to pay dirt if the fortunes of his team were to change. With a gleam in his eye, the junior signal caller did just that - 85 yards and 11 plays for the 24-21 upset victory.
“In the biggest stage it was the first time that we really knew that this kid was special,” says then CU head coach Bill McCartney.
The Buffs were 2-0 and the framework of a future national championship team was developed. But the quarterback who led them to victory would never witness that day.
Siasau Pepa Aunese or Sal Aunese for short, was an All-American quarterback at Vista High School in Vista, Cali. Aunese was heavily recruited by many programs, including the University of Nebraska. At 5-foot-11 and 195 pounds, Aunese didn’t seem like an imposing figure, but he had the natural ability to inspire others with his play. On his first play under center, he took the snap and glided right of the wishbone formation for 32 yards. He would end the day rushing for 185 yards on 22 carries. A legend was born. Aunese would become the starting quarterback for the rest of the season and earn the Big 8’s Newcomer of the Year Award. In the 1988 season, he led the Buffs to an 8-3 record and a bowl birth with thrilling comeback victories over Colorado State and Iowa.
Going into the Freedom Bowl against BYU, everything seemed set for a 9-3 final record, a best for Coach McCartney at CU. But Aunese didn’t seem right. His passes weren’t as crisp. He didn’t glide around the wishbone formation like his coaches and teammates were accustomed to. Something was noticeably wrong. He was pulled for Darian Hagan and the Buffs eventually lost the game 20-17. The season ended with an 8-4 record but more importantly, that would be the final college football game in Aunese’s career.
During the off-season, Aunese would take himself out of workouts and drills. He began to cough violently, spiting up blood in the process. At times he refused to drink water or eat food. He saw a doctor, and on March 30, 1989 was given the grim news: he had developed an incurable stomach cancer. Doctors surmised he had “several months, to several years” to live.
“From the time he took sick in the spring nobody knew that he was dying for sure,” says McCartney. “But when the team gathered again that fall; he was just a shell of his former self. It was just obvious. Sal was dying and all you had to do was look at him and you could see that.”
Sal would be driven to the practices, but he was too weak to stay long. It hurt too much. He would come to the first three games of the 1989 season, but during the bye week on September 23, 1989. At just 21, Sal Aunese succumbed to cancer. He left behind his family and friends and also his 5-month-old son Timothy Chase McCartney.
The rest of the ’89 season was dedicated to Aunese. The left sleeve of the Buffs’ game jerseys had a gold band with “SAL” inscribed in large, black, block letters. The players gave an emotional tribute to Sal with a point to the heavens before the game at Washington. They would make it to the Orange Bowl against Notre Dame, but lost 21-6. The next year the Buffs would meet Notre Dame once again in the Orange Bowl, but this time they granted Aunese’s wish; they were 1990 National Champs.
Today, Sal’s son T.C. McCartney is a reserve quarterback at LSU playing for the same coach that recruited his father, Les Miles. T.C. was with the team in 2006 when they won the national championship. T.C. is following after his father’s footsteps, so it’s not surprising that he wants to become a future coach someday.
20 years later, the story of the life and death of Sal Aunese and his determination to fight off cancer, which brought a community and a team together like never seen before in Boulder, is still being told.
“Anytime that you get a guy that is whole-hearted, a tremendous competitor, unselfish, - particularly in a sport like football, where that guy is your signal caller - those guys are going to leave an impact and leave a mark,” says McCartney, more than two decades after coaching the young man who changed his life. “And he did that.”
EFFA MANLEY…(3-8-09)
She kept the scrapbook full of legends. Names like James “Cool Papa” Bell, Satchel Page and Josh Gibson were some of the names included in the book. But for Effa Manley, her scrapbook was also filled with names that are not so easily recognizable to the common fan. Names like Toni Stone one of the three African American women to play in the Negro Leagues, feared right-handed hitter Jim “Japper” Japp and James H. “Lefty” Turner.
Her Black roots were instilled into her early as a child, so much so that Effa was considered to be a light-skinned Black woman, despite the fact that both of her parents were White. As she grew up from adolescence to womanhood another love became apparent about Manley, she was infatuated with the game of baseball.
In 1935, Effa married Abe Manley, which was a man that she met at a Yankees game, and two years later they became owners of the Newark Eagles of the Negro Leagues, which played their games at Brooklyn Dodger's Ebbets Field.
During a time when women were considered second-class to men, Manley was the first and only woman to become an owner in the Negro Leagues. Manley did it all by actively managing the team, calling the plays, positioning the players and rotating pitchers. She went on the road trips with the Newark Eagles, demanding and getting respect.
Manley worked to improve the condition of the players in the entire Negro League by advocated better scheduling, pay and accommodations. Her players traveled in an air-conditioned Flexible Clipper bus, which was considered extravagant for the Negro Leagues.
Manley also made a major impact in the Civil Rights Movement as she served as the treasurer of the Newark chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP, for short. In 1939, Effa held an "Anti-Lynching Day" at Ruppert Stadium often using Eagles games to promote civic causes.
Manley was as unique as the League she owned. Once there was a story that said that she gave the bunt sign to her players during the game by crossing and uncrossing her legs.
As Effa Manley turned the pages of her old scrapbook, she told a reporter "People say, don’t live in the past, but I guess it depends on how interesting your past is." Effa Manley understood that the past isn’t something to be lived through, but to be learned by.
And she is teaching us about an importance of the Negro Leagues in American History, one page at a time.
Effa Manley was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame in 2006 and her gravestone fitly read, “She Loved Baseball”.
One nice summer day, young Justin was taking a stroll, minding his own business when he happened upon...lo and behold, a green and gold football helmet. A Colorado State Rams helmet to be exact. >
So Justin did what any responsible, former Colorado football player would do. He put the helmet in its rightful resting place (below). Once a Buff....always a Buff!
