It’s a classic September day on the front range of the Rocky Mountains: bluebird sky, thin air, ancient flatiron rock formations jutting up sharply above the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado. It’s so refreshingly picturesque that everyone should be outdoors.
Yet there are big doings indoors. In the campus bookstore, the checkout line is a dozen deep and constantly replenishing. It’s roughly 48 hours before the biggest home football game in more than two decades, Saturday against Nebraska, and a conga line of students are toting their fresh gameday merch to the cash register. They are riding a sudden avalanche of football fever that has broken through years of ossified indifference.
“We’ve seen a lot of traffic,” says CU Bookstore associate buyer McKenna King. “There’s lots of buzz, very electric on campus.”
